- Mary Magicc
- The Toxic Consultancy
- Taxonomies of Toxicities
24 pages
A4
Design: Seth Weiner
In the “Toxic Consultancy” workshop offered to organisations, Mary Maggic moves between modes of toxicity: from material and environmental to emotional and interpersonal, and guides participants in a toxic witch-hunt. A discursive exercise in scavenging and naming the poisons of daily life that will then be used to create new taxonomies. They ask: “Can our newly re-imagined taxonomies resist the violent process of othering? How do materialisms and subjectivities already resist being categorized?” The etymologies of “taxonomy" and “toxicity" are both derived from the Greek roots “tactics” and "toxikon” respectively for uses in times of war. Today, taxonomies and toxicities produce a different kind of violence that extends from material to subjective realms, from the geopolitical to the interpersonal. While we all live in a profoundly polluted world, we remain trapped in outdated notions of binary gender and normative bodies that ignore the malleability of life itself.
Mary Maggic’s contribution brings a reflection on the actually existing toxic relationships in environmental and interpersonal domains, and their relations within capitalism, the toxic fungal growth supported by conditions of capitalism: a system that pits individuals against each other, as system that overproduces toxicity in the physical environment as well as in social and interpersonal spheres.
- Lucie Kolb, Bernhard Garnicnig
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What Do We, As An Organization, Provide For Artists?
40 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
In “What do we, as an organization, provide?”, Lucie Kolb and Bernhard Garnicnig propose an indeterminate list of assignments and conditions. Based on several years of scientific and artistic research, the dossier offers both practical and conceptual insights for any organization interested in becoming a host for artists’ services.
- Eglė Budvytytė
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Dragging
24 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
- Miriam Simun
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Scope Of Work
44 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
In Scope of Work; Miriam Simun works with Glyphic Biotechnologies, a startup working on technologies for protein sequencing. The primary aim of Simun’s engagement is to develop a scope-of-work with the company, however, the overall work unfolds through an open Telegram channel, in which Simun catalogs her reflections and learning process: learning together with the audience of the work, a process in which the audience becomes an extension of the consultant and even a participant in the process through their interactions in the channel. Through the work, Simun opens up the question of what happens when the artist takes a position within the system of production (“artists as consultant”) as opposed to the position of independent, yet dependent on patronage (“artist in residence”)?
Simun’s work problematizes the conditions of technological innovation, as the artist traces both the stories of people and the flows of money and energy being moved for innovation. Biotechnology rearranges lives on multiple levels - molecular, interpersonal and political. Simun gestures towards a corporate unconscious: is a biotech company a site of cultural production? And how are dimensions of ethics, friendship, and privacy addressed or ignored amongst constraints of capitalist progress and innovation? What does an artist do amidst all this?
- Artist Project Group
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Sometimes You Have To Open Up A Can Of Worms
36 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
- Jens Van Lathem, Scott William Raby, Tobias Van Royen
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Bureau Of Analogies
40 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
One of capitalism's most erosive effects is the ongoing replacement of social contracts with legal contracts. The power imbalance inherent to relations regulated by the legal system has its foundation in the access to legal counsel. When artists rely on trust and habits in their practice as service providers, they in fact rely on a legal system that is mostly unknown, and therefore inaccessible, to them. This is why the Bureau of Analogies has taken the first steps in finding and modeling relevant legal analogies to integrate within contracts for artists’ services. Specifically adjusted to the situation of a contemporary art gallery hosting an exhibition of artists’ services, the Bureau of Analogies project is based on research on the specific situation of artists’ working conditions in Vienna, and previous work which resulted in reformulating an artwork lending contract for an exhibition as a foster care agreement.
- Parsa Sanjana Sajid
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Nothing And Too Much All At The Same Time
20 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
Parsa Sanjana Sajid offers insight into the ways in which the consultancy industry's methods and practices influence many aspects of life yet simultaneously fails to produce the effects it is claiming to have. The jargon of social impact, she writes, “produces nothing and too much all at the same time. It is action and inaction at the same time.” Drawing on examples from Myanmar and Bangladesh, Sajid traces the expansion of western consultancy capitalism into a new international market, while an ongoing refugee crisis continues to cause physical and psychological violence. She writes “The promise of social impact is wide and shallow. Social impact is a ready script and vision with which businesses, governments, nonprofits, think tanks have armed themselves. Often consultants “help” in fulfilling that promise. Promises of change and results, quantifiable evaluations and actionable terms, efficiency and process improvements, acceleration and deceleration all tied to the rhythms of capitalism. Consultants are experts at finding a seat at the table to turn a concept into a cliché – disruption, innovation, thinking outside the box. A stake on the street would be more promising.”
- MEMECLASSWORLDWIDE
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@mcww.service
28 pages
A4
- Design: Seth Weiner
The artist collective memeclassworldwide served as a rogue consultancy service to a German art school over several years by running a critical meme channel and self-organised seminars. Since graduating from school, they shifted their collective practice towards offering rogue consultancy services to other organisations and institutions. For this, they developed an online performance on TikTok, asking the question “What if institutions would ask their constituents for principles, terminologies, and instructions instead of demanding their assimilation?”. The channel and its included works represent the many problematic institutional relations that, taken together, constitute and represent invisible capitalist infrastructures supported by consultancy capitalism, characterizing a broad ecosystem of institutional relations and problems. memeclassworldwide resultantly intervenes into the methods and ideologies present in consultancy capitalism and teaches organisations to see the benefit of giving up control over images and language in a world of pluriversal thought.
- Artist Project Group
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The Artist as Consultant? Workshop Report
32 pages
A4
- Design: Bernhard Garnicnig
Over the past years, throughout various conversations, we began to think through the connections and possible relations between artists and consultants. We developed a hunch: artists are purported to hold an important role in a changing society, but are rarely asked for their expertise. At the same time, the consultancy industry is expanding into increasingly differentiated services, with their methods pervading into decision making processes that govern public life.
We believe that productive and critical relations can be drawn between artists' performative knowledge practices, the scores, approaches and prescriptions developed in performative art forms, and the frameworks and methods found in the practices of the consulting industry.
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