murph the surf wrote:

At one point during an informal presentation in the New York University
art department tonight artist/writer/historian Olu Oguibe read the
itinerary for June of his friend and fellow Nigerian Okwui Enwezor
(director of the next Documenta). The global scale was breathtaking for
someone like me, who still has trouble remembering how much time it
takes to get to LaGuardia Airport from my apartment. The true sign of
success in the new globalized art world are the frequent flyer miles
needed to keep yourself in perpetual motion for the rest of your life.

Airport terminals may replace the gallery opening as the best place to
network these days. They are the new "white cube": perfectly neutral and
there's always someplace to run and someone in a uniform paid to be
pleasant. Plus there's usually a bar nearby.

Oguibe seemed quite accustomed to this new globalization. After the talk
he was on his way to someplace else, then another place, and another –
lecturing here, exhibiting there – and finally back to Tampa, where he
lives and teaches African and African-American art history at the
University of Southern Florida. In between he contributes to various
online forums via the Internet, where he first gained my attention.

During his talk he presented slides from an installation of sculpture in
a suburb outside Tokyo. It consists of work of artists from around the
world who were asked to contibute a work without charge. It's a site for
work to come together publicly on a global scale in one location. To
Oguibe, this site can be manifested anywhere in the world, drawing
influences from the specific location if the artist choses. Others
congregate in other locations.

It is a quite elequent solution for the materially based art world to
the Internet. It will work, of course. These things do. Last spring when
I was home in Spokane, Washington – a place nobody else goes – I
stopped in the local museum and noticed on the bulletin board and
announcement for a lecture the following week by Rikrit Tiravanija, who
must hold some kind of record for frequent flyer miles.

Matt Locke replied:

coming back from venice recently the entire plan was full of london art
mafia. one well aimed goose would have wiped out nearly all the major
curators in the UK…

It was Rikrit's piece in the Giardini this year that, for me, was the
only piece that sucessfully dealt with the concept of the globalised art
world (/market/trade fair). It was 'networked' in a way that made sense
to me as someone who spends more time on-line than I do participating in
the 'real' art world, but it confused a lot of other people…

I mentioned rikrit's piece in an earlier post, and tried to relate it to
some of the other debates floating around at the time about artists
communities and territories. There was a lot of discussion about what
nationality meant in a globalised art world, especially when there are
regular collaborations between artists groups (on and off-line), as
Charles Eche was pointing out.

When I was in glasgow in the early nineties, it was easier to get shown
(through the transmission galleries projects) in the brown spot,
toronto, or in milan, than it was to get a show in London. Whilst I was
still in college, I organised exchange exhibitions between glasgow and
frankfurt. It was really bizarre seeing how the British Pavilion in
Venice is wholly representative of a London based art scene. Naive of
me, I know, but most of our regular contacts are either North UK or
abroad.

I guess you forget how marginalised regional issues are when you live
out there (whether its spokane or huddersfield)…

murph the surf responded:

I talked with someone this morning who was at the lecture last night and
they found Oguibe very confusing and difficult to follow. He wasn't
obscure or jargon-y but he did meander and if you weren't familiar with
contemporary discussions about globalization (Francis Fukiyama, Open
Society etc.) you wouldn't catch his meaning.

His main point (I think) was that total globalization isn't possible
because there are just too many cultural differences as well as vast
differences between local access to the technology involved. What he
seems to have in mind is the creation of an art practice that includes
the concept of globalization. As a citizen of Nigeria he has a very
different experience from a U.S. citizen when trying to enter other
countries. In order to fly from Tampa to Canada he has to first spend a
day driving to Miami in order to get a visa, which he may or may not
get. Also, when he sends a package to his parents in Nigeria "next day
delivery" can take up to two weeks because there are no phones to check
addresses where they live.

Okwui Enwezor, though also from Nigeria, has a U.S. passport, which
makes the job of directing the next Documenta much easier.

This art world globe-trotting isn't knew, but is excellerating because,
in my view, a globalized art world will be useful to globalized capital,
from which art draws support. Someone like Oguibe is either naive or
cagey or, most likely, some of both. I asked him about Epcot Center at
Disney World because I'd just visited there and he lives nearby. He
didn't seem to know what I was talking about, or to have thought about.
Half of Epcot is a pretty amazing "global village" consisting of
replicas of cultural trademarks like the Eiffel Tower or San Marco in
Venice. It is extremely picturesque. The rest of the Center consists of
corporate pavillions that promote a positive view of technology. It's
both frightening and fascinating. Art is sort of beside the point there
since it's all art.