12. Where are we now

“You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.”

- Sven Lindqvist (2018 [1990]) ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’. Translated by Joan Tate. London: Granta Books.

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We finished the workshop and some of the group went to the pub. Conversation was overflowing from the two days of working together. There was intense pleasure. And in the days and weeks following we felt shattered: tired, emotionally worn-out, furious, grateful, yet doubtful of the practice of Ghosting itself. It has taken us nearly a whole year to tie up this project, collect these images and write these texts. Where are we now?

Sometimes we feel pretty happy to abandon these spaces. They are doing their own thing, we are doing ours: do we need to get along? As Sophia Kosmaoglou argues: “Excluded artists uphold the fetishised value of the art world even more ardently than those consecrated by it, precisely because they are on the outside, looking in and seeking inclusion.” To lament being outside of them (or to have one sore foot in the door) just seems to reinforce their power. 


As such, we are continually inspired by forms of practice and organising that utterly side-step institutional structures. But how viable is it to exist in ‘the outside’? Reni Eddo-Lodge points out the stranglehold these organisations have on visibility and public funding: “I wouldn’t mind if they were just closed off standalone clubs, but that’s not the case. Instead, they appear to be prerequisites to creative success in this country.” We still feel some need to contest these spaces. As Mick Wilson writes: “I do not believe in the abandoning of institutional spaces as forever and already-doomed; that is simply to accept the fact that capital has captured the state-apparatus [....] It’s just a moment, it’s not a complete total moment. It is just a moment. It can be contested, it should be contested, it must be contested.”

Inside or out, we are steeped in this shit. Gurminder K. Bhambra reminds us that the legacies of colonialism can not be limited to grand manors and questionable trusts. The UK’s current arts institutional landscape has its roots in the welfare state which, as she argues, came about from wealth derived from the murderous violence and looting of British imperialism. We are still coming to terms with what this means.


Ghosting was about the position of the artist in the arts institution. Alongside our doubts about the institutional landscape in general, we’ve become ambivalent towards the role of the artist itself: the specialised figure, the moral agent, the professional, the one with the answers. It feels boring, and like a trap. We are artists, we make performances; but we are also the institutional staff, and participants, and stake-holders, and the public. All the problems we might protest thrive within ourselves.

Beyond the binaries of ‘institution’ or ‘artist’, we ask ourselves: where do we want to hang out, with who, and how? What kinds of parties do we want to throw, and take part in? What spread shall we lay out, what gifts shall we bring, and how shall we write a really good invite? And across all of this: how can we be more transparent, accountable, and joyful? Here’s Andrea Fraser again:

“It’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution. It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to. Because the institution of art is internalized, embodied, and performed by individuals, these are the questions that institutional critique demands we ask, above all, of ourselves.”

***

- Sophia Kosmaoglou (2012) The Self-Conscious Artist and the Politics of Art: From institutional critique to underground cinema. PhD Thesis. Goldsmiths University. Available at: http://research.gold.ac.uk/8000/ 

- Reni Eddo-Lodge (2018) About Race: Shout Out Miss Beep part 2. [Podcast] Available at: https://www.aboutracepodcast.com/6-shout-out-miss-beep-pt-2

- Mick Wilson (2015) ‘Artistic Research between Inquiry and Revolt: Artistic Research, the University, and the Trajectory of a Deleuzian Motif’. At The Dark Precursor, International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research. DARE 2015, Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium.
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/224029/224030

- Gurminder K. Bhambra (2019) Whose Welfare? Colonial Regimes of Extraction and British Subjecthood. Nottingham Contemporary. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXP2qoaONK0&t=1s

- Andrea Fraser (2006) ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’, in John C. Welchman (ed.) Institutional Critique and After. Zurich: JRP Editions, pp. 123-135