Exhibition Review in Mousse magazine
In the wake of technological and economic transformation during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the image of artistic production has undergone major changes. In view of the inner constraints of a reality framed according to post-Fordism with its insistence on efficiency, flexibility, and intelligent self-management? To what extent and in what ways do artists participate in and confront contemporary conditions of global production and capital? Some artists have responded to the changed conditions of production indirectly by pointing out their intrinsic contradictions with the use of definitions such as “productive non-production” or “non-productive production, ” “counter-productive work, ” or the body as site of reproduction and self-production.
The exhibition Counter-Production examines the gesture or method of “counter-production” so as to grasp and address questions relating to the ways in which contemporary artistic production functions. At the same time, this attempt forms the basis of a redefinition of the term “counter-production, ” which, like the politico-economic, technological and socio-cultural fields in which it originally made its appearance, is subject to historical transformation and, as such, is to be redefined. Emerging from historical cinema and philosophy as influenced by the post-1968 counter-cultural movements, this concept has since continued to circulate, thus directly or incidentally subject to inquiry and inspiration in the works of contemporary artists. This may be observed in the case of Marine Hugonnier’s unfinished, and partly concealed, manuscript Travail Contre Productif (1996–on going). With “gestures of restraint”, the latter work seeks to produce something which is not productive.
http://moussemagazine.it/counter-production-generali/