Syndicate: NGSS action

[Oleg Kireev <radek@glasnet.ru>]

"Blow Bubbles as avant-garde of economics"

Koln's Art Cologne fair is one of the world's largest events aimed to create
an isolated zone of art and to turn modern art into the privileged
entertainment for corrupt bohemia. The art, which throughout the XX century
represented the most progressive and revolutionary part of the intellect,
now became one of the specialized fields of capitalist production. The new
action of Non-Governmental Control Commission was brought about during one
of the central events of the fair, namely the discussion "Art as avant-garde
of economics," which was held in KOMED-Saal Meolapart Koln on the 10th of
November and in which all ideologists of market art took part . The action
was called "Blow Bubbles as avant-garde of economics." 

Before the beginning of the public discussion the participants NGCC, art
historian Sylvia Zasse and artist Silvana Toneva distributed the following
flyers in the audience:

*Non-Governmental Control Commission. "Blow Bubbles as avant-garde of
economics." Non-Governmental Control Commission and the magazine Radek hold
an event "Blow Bubbles as avant-garde of economics" which represents our
reply to today's discussion where we were not invited, but decided to
participate in anyway. Yet several other explanatory cues: capital is the
instrument of the power, implemented, for example, by Western Europe towards
Eastern Europe; art is a kind of symbolic capital, the possession of which
tells about the dominant position of the agents of power (thus the mythology
of "art autonomy" spread by the closed cultural events as, e.g. Art Cologne,
looks even more outrageous); Non-Governmental Control Commission is a
politico-art project founded in the spring 1998 by a group of intellectuals
who gathered around Moscow magazine Radek, which organizes political actions
and campaigns based on the new sociopolitical technologies."

The first speaker was Boris Grois, the German theoretician of Russian
descent, who is a vivid example of the "new right" thinking, one of the
creators of professional ideology of the art market employees (the flyer was
distributed together with the parody on Grois where he speaks about his
career in a very infantile language). Soon after his speech began, 10
members of NGCC settled in the audience started blowing bubbles and
continued doing so throughout his speech, provoking the obvious panic of the
speaker and different reactions in the audience (from sympathizing laughter
to nervous aggression *for example the Swiss collector Claudia Jolles tried
to pull out the toy device for blow bubbles from the hands of one of the
participants. Grois tried to finish the confused reciting of his speech with
the unsuccessful improvisation, saying that "bubbles, this is also
beautiful." Without waiting for this, the participants got up and walked out
of the auditorium, and Silvana handed the flyers as an ultimatum to all
members of the presidium (among whom there was the Swiss curator
Jean-Cristoff Amman famous for his derogatory statements about lack of any
prospect for art outside of Western Europe). 

 Summing up the action, the participants of NGCC state that all the set
tasks were implemented, the action was a successful mass-media provocation
(the discussion was covered by the leading European art publications and the
German TV), and a destructive invasion into the world of corrupted
art-establishment. It goes without saying that we view the conceited snobs
not as the main culprits and the authors of the system of capitalist
politics of corruption (exceptions- they are only some of the unconscious
participants and even victims of this system. But every new definition of
those sources of power, their naming and exposing is an important step,
because to talk about this subject, to make the institutionalized
information networks listen to you, pronounce names, direct, find aims*this
is a first step to overthrowing the power and mobilizing new forces for a
struggle with the existing forms of power (M. Foucault).