Art and Economics Since the Crisis

Since the start of the last economic crisis in 2007/08, there has been much discussion of art’s imbrication with money, specifically its instrumentalization in burgeonining cultures of art investing and financial instruments in the art field. Alongside these conversations, there have been important deliberations on the relation of art works to commodities and to the value-form. Marina Vishmidt and Melanie Gilligan address some of these debates in art discourse presenting their own writing work in dialogue with such questions.

Melanie Gilligan is an artist and writer based in New York and London. »The Common Sense« (2014/15), Gilligan’s latest episodic video work is a three-part project presented across multiple institutions and has been on view at de Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam, Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht and De Hallen Haarlem. Previous solo exhibitions include Chisenhale Gallery, London; Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Banff Centre; and Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf. Gilligan’s critical writing on art, politics, and economics has appeared in publications such as »The Market« (Whitechapel, 2013), and »Intangible Economies« (Fillip, 2012), as well as in journals and magazines including Grey Room, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Mute magazine.

Marina Vishmidt is a writer, editor, and critic occupied mainly with questions around art, labor, and value. In 2013, she completed a PhD at Queen Mary University of London, titled »Speculation as a Mode of Production in Art and Capital.« She has authored chapters in »The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics« (London, 2015) and in »The ECONOMY Reader« (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming), and her work on debt, social reproduction, and artistic enterpreneurialism can be found on e-flux journal and libcom.org. She has also written for Afterall, Ephemera, Kaleidoscope, Mute, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst, among other international periodicals and catalogues.