Suhail Malik

• In contemporary art, meaning is constructed by the viewer
• The artwork has to be indeterminate in order to leave space for interpretation
• Common logic of indeterminacy forms a genre with no identity
• This logic is hegemonic in the art world
• Contemporary art has become the plaything of the idle rich
• Why, despite leftist claims about content, does art work very well within the global elite regime?
• No contradiction: global elite understand themselves as moral agents and contemporary art certifies that for them
• As a genre without identity and an insistence on singularity, contemporary art is necessarily a-systemic
• Plurality, openness, supported by “critical virtue”, prohibit systemic responsibility of the artwork, otherwise the indeterminacy would close down
• It may be wanting to be socially responsible, but because of a-systemic nature, cannot do that. It has no structural traction.
• So, if we want to be #accelerationist, we must abandon contemporary art. #accelerationism must make a demand on art.
• However, we’re committed to art: the claims are inline.
• Hard to make demands on art, because it should be spontaneous.
• Upshot: we need another art than contemporary art.
• What can art do for post-capitalism?
• We don’t need to abandon everything. We can take advantage of:
• Transdisciplinarity. Flexibility, adaptability, mutability. Unique among academic disciplines. Transformations.
• Proximate to power and money.
• Mediatic intervention, reflexivity (McLuhan). Not critique, but interventions and construction. Art is particularly good at: intervening in media.

• Art can be a resource for left accelerationism, as long as it isn’t taken as contemporary art.

• Cognitive mapping: produce a sense of orientation in the world (obviously a reduction)

• Pitfall: reality is complex, and maybe not navigable. Societies are large-scale, complex, integrated. We cannot make sense of them in a schematic way.

• Disorientation is the condition for societies we have.

• Problem with cognitive mapping: sounds like data visualization (only a reduction.)

• Here’s somewhere that art can intervene.