Salon X

X we waited but only a few showed up

Economically speaking, what is important is to make money; the more the better. The everyday social engagement may be affective, creative, even productive but it only adds up economically when it is valorized through the sacrament of money (wage, price etc.). The dominance of economic logic imposes commodification, the insertion of objects, subjects and relations in the market as the necessary precondition of valorization. Even practices that claim their autonomy vis a vis the market, like art or science, economism seems to find pathways to impose itself as an objective, exactly because its independent, measure of value.

In our conversation we will try to highlight the mechanism of economization via the process of commodification. We will stress the consequences of this process for artistic creativity, as well as for
the construction of subjectivity. We will focus on cases where individual participation in the market is not achieved, by pointing to examples of individual economic failure, a failure that does not necessary entail social, or even more artistic or scientific failure. Economic failure is rather something to be sought for, something that is necessary for success in other domains. In some cases, economic failure is the outcome of a recalcitrant attitude, a refusal or an inability to change, to adapt in the new maxims of the trade and market.

We aim to celebrate economic failure as a way of resisting the dominance of the market, the rationality of capitalism. Failure remains one of the forms of art not yet incorporated in the process of valorization; at least not quite yet!