LECTURES
Lars Bang Larsen
25/01/2010, 19:30 hrs
25/01/2010, 19:30 hrs
THEY LIVE: TOWARDS AND BEYOND A CRITIQUE OF THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY
Economy and production have often been dressed up in gothic cliché, such as 'the dark satanic mills' of industrialisation or the equally uncanny 'free hand of the marketplace': a dead limb full of independent activity. The sociology of the modern monster still applies. Also the zombi - with its highly ambiguous relationship to individuality, consciousness and life itself - begs a contemporary materialist analysis. In this way we may consider the zombi a model for immaterial labour and the way it is underpinned by a celebration of logistics and a colonisation of the brain and the nervous system. Deleuze and Guattari put it radically: "The only modern myth is the myth of zombis - mortified schizos, good for work, brought back to reason."
With examples from horror literature, visual art and Hollywood zombi cinema, such an analysis - braindead or ridiculous as it may be - can help us dramatise the vegetal innocence and insatiable greed of today’s immaterial worker and cultural consumer. An abject masquerade for the experience economy.
Lars Bang Larsen
An independent curator and writer based in Barcelona, Lars Bang Larsen is known for his seminal writing on the new generation of artists that emerged from Scandinavia in the 1990s, and subsequently his exhibitions and books that offer a fresh approach to considering artists’ engagement with social activism and counter cultures from the 1960s on.
Born in Denmark, Bang Larsen has spent the last ten years predominantly looking into artists’ practice across Europe, the U.S and the Middle East. Recent exhibitions include 'Fundamentalisms of the New Order' for the Charlottenborg in Copenhagen; 'Populism', presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, CAC Vilnius and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam; 'The Echo Show' for Tramway in Glasgow; and currently he is working on a show for Raven Row in London, entitled 'Art, Activism and the Archive'. Bang Larsen is a regular contributor to Frieze, Afterall, and Artforum. In 1998 he was the co-curator for the inaugural Nordic Biennial, and in 2004 he was the curator of the Danish participation for the São Paulo Biennial.
Economy and production have often been dressed up in gothic cliché, such as 'the dark satanic mills' of industrialisation or the equally uncanny 'free hand of the marketplace': a dead limb full of independent activity. The sociology of the modern monster still applies. Also the zombi - with its highly ambiguous relationship to individuality, consciousness and life itself - begs a contemporary materialist analysis. In this way we may consider the zombi a model for immaterial labour and the way it is underpinned by a celebration of logistics and a colonisation of the brain and the nervous system. Deleuze and Guattari put it radically: "The only modern myth is the myth of zombis - mortified schizos, good for work, brought back to reason."
With examples from horror literature, visual art and Hollywood zombi cinema, such an analysis - braindead or ridiculous as it may be - can help us dramatise the vegetal innocence and insatiable greed of today’s immaterial worker and cultural consumer. An abject masquerade for the experience economy.
Lars Bang Larsen
An independent curator and writer based in Barcelona, Lars Bang Larsen is known for his seminal writing on the new generation of artists that emerged from Scandinavia in the 1990s, and subsequently his exhibitions and books that offer a fresh approach to considering artists’ engagement with social activism and counter cultures from the 1960s on.
Born in Denmark, Bang Larsen has spent the last ten years predominantly looking into artists’ practice across Europe, the U.S and the Middle East. Recent exhibitions include 'Fundamentalisms of the New Order' for the Charlottenborg in Copenhagen; 'Populism', presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, CAC Vilnius and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam; 'The Echo Show' for Tramway in Glasgow; and currently he is working on a show for Raven Row in London, entitled 'Art, Activism and the Archive'. Bang Larsen is a regular contributor to Frieze, Afterall, and Artforum. In 1998 he was the co-curator for the inaugural Nordic Biennial, and in 2004 he was the curator of the Danish participation for the São Paulo Biennial.
Duane Hanson, Supermarket Lady, 1969
