Hito Steyerl “Is a Museum a Factory?” e-flux journal reader 2009, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009, pp.28-42

The hatred description of Steyerl, “Former workers have been…dramatically as the factory”(Steyerl, 29) has showed how clearly the factory is becoming a new form of labour with the overflow of media work being displayed in social factory of the museum. The factory now turned into a contemporary museum, the work have been “multiplexed, digitized…rapidly commercialized and neoliberalism” (Steyerl, 29) which it refers back to the idea of “art and market as irreconcilable opposites. The line between the two has become highly permeable”(Graw,81). This also exemplifies the idea of “whether a child collects model…personal treasures will be made to public”, which the individuality becomes collectiveness and the original is shared amongst others which then becomes the duplicate. “The conservative response to the exodus…sanitized, sequesters, cut off from reality”(Steyerl, 30). Perhaps this is the process of being a museum, where it is set up for not a single person to view but open for everyone, “The workers who left the factory…reemerge as a spectacle inside of it.”(Steyerl, 33) which relates to the idea of Appadurai where he dealt with the material that goes into a factory and comes out as anew material with cultures, an exodus gets involved in the process of “social factory” and oped to new range of discourses. The museum, a social factory, it is a good way to share knowledge, gather information and they are trusted materials, but is it necessarily advantageous to everyone? The fact the individualism is being turned into collectivism, where are the intrinsic values? Or is it how the economy is turning us to develop to create new things based on the ideas revealed already? “a singular event… founding new history in which it will exist and be conceived from now on – as the revolutionary act of founding a new art.”(Verwoert, 103). Due to the fact that the materials are exposed to spectators who they get affected by the work which it then takes a role being political to the public. The problem of reconstruction of what factory is as to the space of production and work is clearly stated in the article, “If the factory is everywhere…no way to escape relentless productivity”(Steyerl,40).

James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp.215-251.

As the economic situations change over time, it has affects on the economy of art and on how people view art has also changed accordingly as well as how art is becoming a different matter to its intrinsic values has been picked up in the article.

Nowadays people enjoy spending their leisure time at art galleries or museums as much as playing sports. The more knowledge you have about art or the more collections of artworks in your possession seem to represent your wealth. If you have something that is attractive, you want to let others to know about it, perhaps that is one of the intrinsic nature of humans, just like how mothers want to show off their child how good she/he is at doing something and better than any other children. “Whether a child collects model dinosaurs or dolls…on single objects is negatively marked as fetishism” (Clifford, 219). Perhaps this is the same kind, by the process of presenting the toy on the shelf, the private becomes public and the individuality of the object becomes collective but in taxonomy. Also there is the system of exchange between spectators of knowledge being shared and it raises the political influence to others as well. When someone decides to collect an object/s or any thing in their own possession, it is because they are formerly attracted by its aesthetics just like the view of Clive Bell how he claimed “an aesthetic response is intuitive and involuntary” (Pooke and Newall, 12). But because the toy then gets explained upon the reasons why it is being collected, it becomes contemporary in the way that “anything is permissible in the contemporary art world so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialized” (Kraus, 147). This act of displaying and said about the work is a process of the private becoming public just like the relationship between the original work and the reproductions of the original. By the way that the original work is kept to oneself, gets displayed then viewed by people then it gets globalised. In the end the work loses its originality and its speciality in the fact that there are so many people reproducing the work. Then what is the special thing about the work if everyone has a copy of it and they have viewed it? The huge price difference between the original and the reproduction, perhaps this is what distinguishes people to perceive someone who own the original are financially abundant. The price of an artwork, a way to earn for living, maybe that is why the artists nowadays aim for not as well as “artist’s artist” but also the “recognition” of the artists (Graw, 82). However there is an advantage of a work getting globalised rapidly with the superb quality of the photographs, it leaves not much of a difference between most of the original works and the mimesis. How then is it different and how is it special if I owned an original work myself? Is it just the fact that the work is done by the actual artist? Or that it is shockingly expensive? “Money cannot buy you happiness but it seems money can buy you art” (3News). This shows a strong linkage and the relation between art and market. This also sums up my point about my view on economic situation where art is no longer possessed for appreciation but almost is for an evidence of someone’s financial reputation.

Arjun Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy", Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp.27-47

The points that are raised in the article have articulated some problems or questions for the trend and global cultural flows. In addition to my thoughts of how the art is leading us to within those boundaries and how they have affected artists in terms of art making.

With rapidly developing technology, just like "rhizomic" (Appadurai, 29) we, as studying as independent artists, are surrounded by the tremendous amount of diverse and globalised resources to look at for art practices to develop on, and to create a style of our own. With a huge number of people moving in and out of their countries to another, a country is a globalised with different people all over the world losing its own instinct or traditions. It become an endless map of lines stating travels of people from one place to another creating cross cultures and can be described as "we are in the epoch of simultaneity" (Foucalt, 60). This is a great advantage in art practice being able to look at a wide range of works as well as being able to widen our knowledge. However, it seems to have no specialty or individuality in the work in terms of presence. What I mean here is that due to referencing all sorts of styles from globalised resources, nonetheless the artists do pick out areas that are of interests to themselves, but they seem similar, with similar type of materials, compositions and so on. Where does the work belong? Shouldn't there be some kind of specialty in the work that dominantly shows the artist’s presence? Especially with contemporary art which is referred is "anything can be turned into art" (Kraus, 147) something that do not refer to craftsmanship, something that cannot be marked as one's style. If we were restricted to look at the works that are produces in that country only, what kinds of effects or how different would the work be? The flow of trend works in the similar way as to the cross culture aspect. “Americans themselves are hardly in the present anymore…and so on ad infinitum.” (Appadurai, 30).  They announce the new style as if they are new, but they are reoccurring in an endless circle, the old ones coming back with some kind of new things added to it, just like an old trend disguised as a new.

Glenn Adamson Thinking Through Craft, Oxford: Berg 2007, pp.69-101

The conflict between the workmanship of certainty and workmanship of risk has been viewed as the matter of skill and how it influences art. How then, art is perceived by different artists are discussed in the article.

Art embodies diverse views on skill which binary situations exist where art is debated as something that is produced upon skill, creativity or else. Skill is mentioned as “experience”(Adamson, 79). To me, experience is the knowledge you gain from the uncountable numbers of trials you go through without any restrains to realise the characteristics of a material or to gain the understandings of materiality and be able to obtain the result you aimed for. Therefore, skill and ideas are explored based on experimentations and experiences, which can be summarised as learning by doing (Reid).  In the article, Jason Pollock says, “It doesn’t make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement” (Adamson, 69). Similar to art education or in arts field, it is becoming more about something literal than visual aspects of what has been made. This means that there are more emerging groups of artists in that context, contemporary art or conceptual art. Looking at previous article, “anything is permissible in the contemporary art world so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialized.”(Kraus, 147), it makes me question where skill actually stands in art. If anything is possible and anything could be turned into art as long as it has something to explain and support the work, what is skill and do you need it? If there are no restraints in giving the artistic value to any work, is skill really important? It makes me think it is not the skill of workmanship that matters but it is the skill of language, skill of putting the ineffable to the effable is what is important in art at present.

Thierry de Duve - "When Form Has Become Attitude - And Beyond"

Thierry de Duve “When Form Has Become Attitude – And Beyond” (1994), Theory in contemporary art since 1945, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005, pp.19-31

This article deals with the question of what art actually is and how it is viewed differently from various aspects, comparing the important issues that are similar to each other but may seem to be oppositional matters in art education.

The curiosity has been raised thinking about what the answers are to what the good education of art is. Art has become a generous subject nowadays which it allows a variety of groups of people to produce and engage with art without any talent. But what is talent indeed? When the article has mentioned about talent and creativity, talent is something that is limited and inherent abilities given to only a certain number of people who are capable of doing something perfectly and able to play within the boundaries of perfection.  But whereas creativity is something that makes art lose its value from historical aspects and allows to generate a new field of art which is developing and taking over the education in academy to get people educated in what it is called, “contemporary art”; anything can be turned into art. Looking back at my history in art, during college, we learned to produce perfect paintings or drawings of objects and learned to imitate an artist model in order to establish a new style of painting of my own. However, since education in university began, that progress of developing art skills has been put aside. We began to learn more on the side of "creativity". We have gone through both types of education and have experienced both. It is up to individuals to evaluate which of the two is suitable for generating artists. From the text, it made me curious about different categorized aspects of art. What are the things that make art? What should be included and what should not be to make a good art? These are the things I have never realised before looking at art from these perspectives. To me, I do not think one could insist art is a matter of one or another.   

Dan Fox “Contemporary Art and Culture?”, Frieze Issue 136, January – February 2011, pp.104 – 105

The similar way of comparing related matters. This text also looks at problems and it talks about critical issues about art and the relations to politics as well as the general issues of the world.