ArtLeaks Gazette Now Online!

1. Season for Treason permalink

   May 23, 2013 11:36 AM

   An open letter to Dmitry Vilensky, Vladan Jeremić and Corina Apostol of ART-LEAKS.ORG
   by Organ Kritischer Kunst ( Pablo Hermann, Juan Pablo Díaz) & Andrius Savickas

   We compiled this letter not in order to finally get the answers to our numerous questions we addressed to you personally regarding our collaboration with ARTLEAKS (we realized no discussion is possible from your side), but to make our disappointment with this practice public, so that other interested parties would make their opinion of
   ARTLEAKS prior to their engagement with your project.

   *

   What we did experience submitting a piece of writing dealing with German Establishment Culture of spring-summer 2012 was a ton of irrelevant remarks by the editors that lasted half a year – till the topic became irrelevant – which eventually came out to be nothing else but another method of “bringing consciousness down to the masses” (to us) by an anarcho-leninist spirit of artleaks editorial (and corresponding to political views common among their crew). All this only to be told that our submission did not conform to the format of Art Leaks Gazette one week before its public presentation – supposedly because we did not pass “writing from personal experience” filter – never mind the fact that concrete content of our contribution was known to the supposed publishers around a half year before the finished publication which was presented in Brecht Forum New York.
   It comes as no surprise that artleaks editorial continues the obnoxious practice started by their heirs being acting accordingly to an agenda which is pre-decided, never discussed and imposed on the less theoretically vigorous – or even simply less fluent in English, which was a case with the two editors “collaborating with us” leaving the open mailing list and questions raised to them only to insult someone from our working group individually. While the demands to honestly explain the removal of our text that contrasted the contributions for the same publication by the institutionally larger partners of individual ARTLEAKS members (for example Vilensky’s and David Riff’s “Former West” mate Jonas Staal and his parliamentarian- democratic platform for militarists and weaponed paramilitary groups – “The New World Summit”) miserably failed, we were accused for “poor English” (supposing most of the work was not done by ourselves but the language editor), “cold-topics” (supposing the colonialist agenda and the promotion of fascist artists by Christov-Bakargiev of documenta13 that we put in a broader social & political context was “known to most in the art world” though somehow nobody dared speak its name), and there was a “lack of truth” meaning we only drew on personal accounts but have not quoted them or took interviews?

   But let’s talk about the notion of “leaks”, which has obviously first come with Wikileaks and only then made its way into Artleaks. Wikileaks has a fetishistic obsession with “truth” that leads from the revelation of secret state info and ends up unquestionably trusting the credibility of such documents: where the institutions are judged
   for not conforming to their self-styled ethics though their existence is never questioned. Artleaks, springing from the “cultural workers” “defense of their professional integrity” mirrors the Wikileaks and is unable to look beyond art and politics, namely Artleaks strives to function as a publishing body for non existing cultural workers trade
   union: while some of the cases currently on the website seem important to publish, the questioning of the modern conception of art or distrust for “politics” (both of which have a very material function of psychic gentrification) are banned from the platform and the authors labeled stupid conspiracy theorists (A curious take on Wikileaks has been written by Florian Cramer and was formerly available on metamute.org “WikiLeaks Has Radically Altered the Military-Diplomatic-Information Complex: 10 Reasons For and Against”, and still visible on the net).

   Our experience with the Artleakers, unfortunately, point to one conclusion: it suffers from the calculated collaborations and relies on career prospects for the undertakers and co.: we could define the phenomena as a careerist platform – not even talking about the political convictions and alliances made (which extend to “fundamentally democratic” support for Al-Quaida, Columbian Paramilitarism and other fascist or fundamentalist groups and appear extremely difficult to digest), or the fact that some of the editorial are convicted Soros children. Dmitry Vilensky, asked about his comrades in 2010, had this to say:

       “Buden: But what about the conflicts in this field – I mean the
   different often opposing interests and ideas among artists, including
   of course the so-called teaching artists, that cannot be suppressed
   even if they share a common, let’s say ”ideological” ground, that is,
   a common cause in art and politics?

       Vilensky: At the moment, I have not experienced a situation of
   confrontation among people who share a common ground, or at least not
   in a direct manner. Of course there is some competition even within
   the same network, but because I see our networks in serious
   confrontation with the mainstream of the art world and academia, I
   feel that mutual support and sharing resources are very present – a
   bit like a mafia family. (…)”

   (SOURCE http://eipcp.net/transversal/1210/buden-interviews/vilensky)

   This experience which evidences the artleak of artleaks has driven us to many questions, respective responses to which are still waiting to be manifested. Maybe by this intention of open dialogue some of the incognita can be revealed. The OKK –group is not conformed and not satisfied with the concept of “God”-given artist supremacy: due to this, “the mafia” (as described above) quietly knows what should and should not be said about art – the careers of the comrades depend on the reproduction of vanguardist “teachers”, which inverts the categorical imperative of Kant in a negative sense that doesn´t show new options but only shows and reproduces the bad treatments. Where are the alternatives?

   With greetings from Berlin

   Okk – team 19/05/2013

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