D for Distribution

©Andreas Topfer

In our day to day, with every step we take, when we get to work (if we get to it –or when we sit down, at home, coffee-tea-juice and computer…) when we buy, move in metro-bus-bicycle-car…when we drink water, fizzy drinks or alcohol; at every moment we are surrounded by rules: moral or legal, binding or nor, that determine the way things are, and fix the codes and conduct of what is correct and just.

In the same way the politics we define marks our ways of life, the laws that surround us –even if we ignore them- determining our capacities and our limitations. Trapped by rules, even if we aren’t familiar with them, these also reach an art market that has surpassed all limits of what is moral, just and correct (like for example, Richard Prince) but that, despite this, populate a complex system that is often not observed with sufficient attention.

In this issue we proposed to talk about the rules that govern distribution in the world of art and everything that derives from this essential step within the system.

We wanted to tackle the subject from a legal, specialised point of view, so we asked Eva Soria to collaborate , accustomed as she is to moving across two fronts, the legal and the artistic. We also wanted to broaden judgment and extend options with the critical observation fro channels that we have known with the turn of the century: Glòria Guso wrote a commentary suspicious of crowdfunding (could we also call it “broad based capitalism”?), of its dangers and perversions. Nerea Arrojería wrote a text full of the referents there have been, testimony to a real option for a different form of distribution, that of sharing, as a viable and efficient alternative. María Muñoz contributed with an indispensable interview with the generous and multifaceted Arman Avanessian,a philosopher of speculative realism and author of the project Discreet, an intelligence agency for people. A conversation in which we also learned, about systems of power and sabotage within the art system, the Zeitkomplex and the need to go beyond the “contemporary”.