Why do artists not get compensated for images that train artificial intelligence (AI) programmes, such as DALL-E, Dream Studio, and Lensa? Are eco-activists’ smear campaigns of famous art works such as Claude Monet’s “Haystacks” or Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Sower” effective forms of political protest, or pseudoprovocative PR stunts in an attention-grabbing economy instead ? What does Christie’s and Highsnobiety’s cancelled apparel line Art Handler say about the value of work in the contemporary art industries ?
In this course, we will explore art work(s), technological innovation, and political protest from the vantage points of their creative, cultural, and socio-economic production. Not only artists themselves, but also other actors, such as audiences, curators, art entrepreneurs, and critics are involved in these processes of value creation. Diving into real world examples of creative practice, we will explore organizational and relational power dynamics through which aesthetic taste is set, changed, and sold. We will also engage with larger societal trends and transformations and speculate on the implications of such developments for the future of creative professions.
By the end of the course, we will have a clearer understanding of the relationship between the arts and the economy, relevant actors and institutions, and the processes through which an artwork is turned into an economic product. We will have engaged with contemporary political debates and the role of the art worlds in provoking and facilitating them. Last, we will have arrived at alternative understandings of what an artwork may mean beyond its creative intention, within the contexts of society, cultures, and economic markets.