The Matrix has
you
Stefan
Krüskemper
»One must see the perspective
of corporations as the only social retreat: I call this exodus
act one. Every political change, every social upheaval is also
a cultural change. The first task is the development of subjectivity:
the creation of new forms of sociability, that are not based
upon trade nor the selling of the workforce.« 1
The Matrix has you
Intellectual multitudes: networked life forms rove the cities
and delve into fleeting associations – a work group,
a job, a new project. They all have something to offer: their
subjectivity, their beliefs, and their ability to communicate.
They are flexible enough to discuss the competitors´ prices,
able to bring forth and realize their own ideas. the product
is a (de-)valued social relation. The price that is paid is
the erosion of individual living conditions through the totality
of work and the financialization of relationships. riven and
exhausted through their self- inflicted and exploited deeds,
with the euphoric zest of a new work group, they fellow their »calling« in
the static matrix of a postfordism communications landscape.
This matrix of individuality promotes a completely
different way of living, than that of full-time industrial existence
composed of work – leisure and production – consumption.
The central tool of immaterial work of the intellectual masses
is the widening of productive cooperation and therewith the reproduction
of communication. More so: the process of producing communication
directly begins to become a process of utilization, so that once-passive
consumers, from the first moment, are included in the economic
matrix.
Communication Landscape
Maurizio Lazzerato writes: »contrarily the act of consuming
is productivity, as it is a necessary condition of a new product.
Consumption is hence especially the consumption of information.
It is no longer only the realization of a new product, instead
real social procedure of its own right, defined for and in that
moment as communication.« 2 The evaluating and informing
of the consumers, as well as the positioning and publishing of
the producers, are the bonds within the matrix, which establish
this social procedure.
The product of immaterial work is the »message« and
the discourse of its positioning within the matrix. such a public
relationship, as a procedure, can only exist and be productive
when open interest is found. This is so described by Michael
Goldhaber 3 in the internet magazine Telepolis, the lean resource
of open interest as a new and individual form of economics. The
positioning of a social relationship needs in this economy of
communication, a carrier of information, that can transform the
immaterial products into marketable and utilizable goods. But:
how is the value of an object established when its material medium
is pushed into the background and, usually, the degree of autonomy
and subjectivity attributed to the productors is defined by this
background?
The Value of Work
in the Act of Consuming
Martin Burckhardt, audio artist and media theorist, named his
theory of overvalue in an interview 4»psychologistik«.
Formerly the artifact was seldom, the artistic table, the special
chair. this seldomness and its own logistics of transportation
specified the value. In the age of mechanical reprodution is
the seldomness crossed over in the act of the consuming. »Because
I can experience it!« something receives its own value.
Immaterial work receives its value, through
the act of consuming by the persons whose attention was caught.
This digital principle of the »psychologistic« experiences
the tele-existancies in the economical sphere of the internet
paradigmatically. Because here the shift from industrial production
to cultural projection, which transports goods in the »mind«,
is already performed. Through the download (the conveyance of
goods in real time) and through the perception according to psychological
rules the product and the work, linked with it gains, its value.
The categories of passivity and activity are replaced in the
internet with a general process of communication. The people
as a mass valuate. concrete economic examples of this new form
of values can be found in the internet in the form of »beenz« 5
currency. The interest of the consumer is then qualified and
rated. His or her behaviour and clicking, namely the interest,
is changed into an account in »beenz«. This credit
can be spend at any other location (better: other URL) in this
system. This as a simplified attempt to establish a payment for
consumption. The partaking in the social procedure of communication
truly cannot be qualified commercially, because it basically
stands for cultural projection procedures, that produce generally
accepted morals and social values. Relation.
After the Industrial
Production: the Cultural Projection
An example of a company, whose morals are already concepts, ideas
and images, is quoted by jeremy rifkin, »every company
wishes to be like nike. this company has neither their own factory
nor their own material trading goods. Their shoes are made by
anonymous out-sourcing firms in southern asia. Nike is a design
studio with a very strong brand name and a very productive marketing
team with a world wide network. The company does sell shoes on
the traditional market, but organizes its business through the
b2b network with delivery all around the world. Nike´s
real capital is its image, with which it sells its shoes. When
a child buys a Nike shoe for 100 $ he is actually buying the
Nike experience.« 6
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Published in: log.buch -
netz/kunst/werke, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg
2001.
ISBN 3-933096-40-5
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When the corporate product becomes a cultural
projection, it is to be expected that cultural and economical,
medial, political and artistic aspects be united with the corporation
itself. In as much as the old conditions of gainful occupation
approach the cultural production of the immaterial work, hence
the structual deficit of »human resources« will deteriorate
even more sharping in companies were hierarchy is structurally
imbedded. And so there is a multiplication of contributions that
artists conform to classical imagery of the immaterial producer,
and to represent the fore front of flexible and creative network
form of living, that can market and finance itself with confidence. »Thus
it is that todays conscience still, although unwillingly, deals
with this and is a role model found in the artistic procedure.
In art this is about accomplishing the archetypal imagery exactly
interpreted to the present, and is demanded more and more today.
In this sense all that is work and dealing with goods and trade,
can also be seen as art. The customer oriented salesman is, so
to speak, an artist, as well as a manager or foreman, has to
become artists, from them it is expected to act in very creative
and artful ways.« Thesis from the sociologist Michael Brater.7
The threat that Joseph Beuys defined – everything is art?
The Simulation of
Living
Fear of losing one´s lively hood, the introversion of the
capitalistic productive way of thinking and unloyalty within
social behaviour are the appearances we see, presently together
with the stress factors of the independent contractors, in the
context of art. If achieved by a few, that the individual has
a financial and satisfactory relationship to his work, what is
left in the most cases is a precarious work situation. The winner
takes it all. It is fatal: it raises the number of low-income
jobs and leaves the necessary insurances to the individual because
social contracts are deregulated. Those that do not give in,
notice in the passage of time that their lives have only been
a simulation, in relation to family and friendship, there is
a functional upholding of the economic formulated status quo:
the consolidation of their subjectivity with the expectations
of production. Shall we have art in simulated life instead? The
future of living: simulated work? The danger of an all encompassing
economy, the simulation of art or living, is averted by Michael
Brater and numerous other sociologists through demanding of an
unconditioned minimum pay for all that participate in social
communicational procedure (consumption fee for everybody). An
amount of 700$ each, Gorz suggests, which could be increased
by extra work.
There is no Right
in the Wrong
Immaterial work is exploited by the abstraction of money and
reproduces capital- behaviorism, and with it the already existing
structure of the flexible capitalism: the matrix has you. A suitable
example is given by Walter Schulz from the Mannesmann–Pilot
development, that frequently artists are welcome to bring the
necessary creative input for the company; »He who brought
the needed know-how free lanced, is after the project –that
has been agreed upon– truly exhausted, he has left a part
of his competence and creativity as well as energy to us. he
needs afterwards a relaxing phase and further professional development
to be of interest again for the job market.«10 Not always
is this expressed in an appropriate fee as in the Mannesmann
model. When you as a subject are used up, contruct for yourself
a new identity, and become a productive part once again – thus
is the generally accepted slogan.
The social philosopher Robert Kurz describes
the total restructuring of human work into energy for the economy
of modern times as »self combusting«. The linkage
of money as an abstractum with work, in general, is detached
from the conditions of social life: a combusting machine, that
reduces all that is alive into dead, and leaves behind only a
simulation of that which is alive. We cannot rid ourselves of
this work, not without getting rid of the money as well! Put
in another way, separation of work and money, or mildly stated:
the insistence for a basic financing of livelihood, is an emancipation
of the possible to exist as a antagonizing element within the
matrix of the communication-economy.
Subversive Strategies:
Work Productivity in a Leisurely Manner and New Forms of Sociability
In the »Grundrisse« by Marx, we find the topic of
general knowledge of a society, the »général
intellect«. André Gorz adds »In the times
of the internet, the cybernetic and networked computer information
we clearly see that work-time no longer is a unit to measure
work, no longer the measure of produced riches, because the foundation
of it is basically only the continuation of material into the
immaterial, intellectual work, the reflection, the understanding
and trading of information, the spreading of knowledge, shortly
said, the général intellect. (…) Thus man
must claim places to live, to get active and to be able to exchange
with one another, where people can be sociable and also produce
immaterial as well material riches.« 12
Immaterial work establishes in general forms
of collective and social cooperations, which in spite of submitting »ideological« goods
to the logic of capitalistic worth, do not lose the potentiality
of self organization.13 Furthermore: the content of a society
does not lose its specific individuality, not even if it is seen
as goods. The descripted matrix of immaterial work is hence autonomous,
there, where it does not allow the capitalistic value system
to represent or take over completly. There, where work becomes
productive in a leisurely manner and reflects upon the mechanisms
of utilization.
However: the denial of the abstract connection
of work and money is urgent, to become able to experience and
live new forms of subjectivity in a dignified way. New forms
of sociability with reliability and places to live, where the
acquisitation of talents, which aren't utilizable in a capitalistic
mean, and where work productiv in a leisurely manner are the
origin of the productivity - the social process of communication
- we find remotely in political movements, in socially engaged
initiatives, or in some artistic community projects. Security
of a living standard in the form of a basic financing of livelihood
which promotes itself out of the descripted cultural changes
or a sound internal point system, as some individual communes
have set up for themselves, are a pragmatic (future-) strategy,
to avoid »self combustion«. To be able to work.
01 Interview mit André Gorz: »Aktuelles
Elend, möglicher Reichtum«
02 Maurizio Lazzarato: »Immaterielle Arbeit«
03 Telepolis, Michael Goldhaber: »Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie«
04 Projektteil mit Martin Burckhardt: »Immaterielle Produktion«
05 Telepolis: »beenz«
06 Jeremy Rifkin: »Klick den Markt weg«
07 Michael Brater: »Künstlerische Praktiken im Arbeitsprozeß«
08 Projektteil mit Stephan Kurr: »Selbstausbeutung verweigern«
09 WZB Berlin: »Arbeitsmärkte für Publizisten
und Künstler«
10 Thomas Röbke: »Arbeit und Kunst«
11 Projektteil bei Artcircolo und Büro Orange: »postersession«
12 Interview mit André Gorz: »Aktuelles Elend, möglicher
Reichtum«
13 Projektteil mit Claudia Klinger, Ralf Ebbinghaus: »Teleexistenz«
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