Pål Hollender: Virtualizing accountability
Hot on the heels of Monday's look at a a bout of undeserved frenzy over what I interpret as a relatively undramatic bit of artistic social commentary, I've just been handed a slip of paper alerting me to Swedish performance artist and filmmaker Pål Hollender, whose supposed moral dilemma is a bit higher stakes.
In 2003, Hollender invested SKr100,000 (around $12,500) in "unethical" companies — an arms manufacturer, as well as representatives of the tobacco, alcohol, pornography and gambling industries. He has thus far distributed SKr32,500 (around $4,000) in "scholarships" derived from the returns. The grants were awarded to visitors last month to "The Pål Hollender Foundation for Ethically or Aesthetically Offended Consumers of Culture" at Malmö Art Museum in southern Sweden.
The reactions to this that I’ve seen tend to range from applauding the fund as social commentary to condemning it outright as mere provocation.
Naturally, the former is correct if what Hollender is doing is raising awareness of the atrocities committed by these so-called "unethical" companies, or at least raising the awareness of a backdrop of atrocity that underwrites our day-to-day consumer lives. The latter is correct, however, if in doing so he also acts as the middle man for the profit of some at the potentially devastating expense of some others, and in doing so gains some reputation for himself. As I see it, in the most generous reading anyone can fairly give this project, he’s done both.
This, however, does not mean that he breaks even. Because in doing the latter in the service of the former, what he simultaneously does is short circuit the possibility of accountability for everyone involved. The companies receive and profit by his investment, his reputation profits, the museum profits from attendance, individuals in his decidedly first-world community can profit from scholarships or not, but no one anywhere inside that vertical circuit takes responsibility for the unethical practices of the companies.
His projects, then, create a circuit of exchange for accountability: everyone involved can point at someone else and blame them for their complicity, meanwhile maintaining their own clear conscience. And on this count, it seems to me the most unethical type of artwork, one whose purpose is to enable artistic discourse to virtualize accountability.
| Tagged with: | Accountability, Art, Ethics, Moral Dilemmas, Responsibility |
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