One point that I did not make on TV is that Collateral is not a snide insider joke, but is a challenge to the system – not just the machinations of the artworld, but the whole system including how this kind of gesture is received and discussed publicly. As you point out the media is very much a part of that.

Art in the headlines is usually sensationalised, and is so often a superficial discussion about dollar value vs other kinds of value.

I just read an interview with Chris Burden where the interviewer queried Burden about ‘a good system to understand and price the value (cultural and commercial) of art’ asking Burden in relation to his work if there is ‘any discrepancy between the commercial value and the cultural value’ Burden’s terse sounding answer:

‘There is no relationship between commercial value and cultural value.’

I’m still thinking about that.

ch

If there is to be a shoot-out between the media and artists up on the high moral ground, then I think that the artists are clearly better armed and are going to be the ones left standing.

The media need to point to other people’s loads of rubbish to conceal the fact that current affairs is one of the biggest loads of rubbish around. It’s also a load of rubbish that gets far more money from the public than any artist ever will. Best to hide that fact, they reckon.

Artists, however, are more morally able to question the nature of the business they are in. Collateral does that for the reasons that you’ve set out. For me, one of the key points it makes is that institutions quite literally do the picking of winners. A passive appreciation of aesthetics is not the business that the art system is in, despite all media romanticisation to the contrary.

If we have to put up with being battered by the “it’s not art” debate every couple of years, then let’s give some time to the “it’s not news” debate as well.

It’s hardly new/s that art can takes as its subject matter the art system. It’s hardly new/s that artists give instructions to others on the physical compilation of work. It’s hardly new/s that artists don’t always use high cost materials.

I can understand negative feelings about the work. I don’t imagine it felt that great being a fellow contestant and being on the receiving end of an implication that the institution regarded going through their submissions was akin to sifting through rubbish.

PM.