A Political-Economic Corollary to Bown’s Dictum
A couple of days ago, Ollie Bown commented over coffee that “all art is about politics”. At the time it seemed to me a nice parallel to Von Clausevitz’s much misunderstood maxim that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”, but I was not sure whether Ollie’s line was pithy or merely witty. Today it’s occurred to me that, if it were true, then Free and Open Source Art would be largely about Political Economy. We know that “Free” means “as in speech” and not “as in beer”, but nevertheless broad permissions to copy and disseminate cultural artifacts produce shockwaves in the economic processes around cultural practices.
Freedom to copy, modify and disseminate alters the exchange ratios of many intangible values: the balances of attention to talent, of exclusivity to cachet, of geographic centrality to prestige, of availability to value, and many other social and psychological factors that influence appreciation of artworks. In the lightcone of the Free Software event, nobody can escape this transformation, and curators, critics and art historians are no exception.
As a working statement, I would propose that “all Free Artforms are about the Political Economy of Status”, and leave it at that, at least for now.