Bursting the art bubble

The world of art is generally considered separate from social and political life. A new exhibition at the Project presents a different picture, writes Aidan Dunne.

The boldly titled Communism at the Project Gallery springs from an invitation to artists to explore their own relationship to the word, in the context of the apparent triumph of globalised capitalism or, as it has been unhappily dubbed, neoliberalism.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, China's move to a market economy and the heady tone of millennarian texts such as Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, it seemed that communism had been forever consigned to the scrap heap. The implication was that there was simply no viable alternative political or economic model to that entailed by the dictates of neoliberalism.

You don't have to be a genius to realise that things haven't quite worked out that way, that history has not quite ended, that the brave new world of the global marketplace is riven with contradictions - not least the problematic nature of the "free" in free trade - and that the unrestrained movement of capital in search of profit may not, in the end, serve the best interests of the majority or, indeed, anyone except the select few.

Do artists have much to offer in this global context? It is a paradox of much of the contemporary, globalised art scene that, while on the face of it art has never been more socially, culturally and politically aware, to all intents and purposes it exists in an "artworld" bubble - at one remove from social, political and even the wider cultural realities, particularly with regard to the exercise of power and engineering change. While it seems that art is extraordinarily free to flout conventions and break taboos, it is as if it enjoys that freedom at the expense of forgoing the possibility of exercising any practical influence on things.

With regard to certain kinds of art, this is so arguably because it inhabits a relativist, post-modern space, the rarefied, infinitely flexible space of critical theory, whereby systems of all kinds, including political, are seen as arbitrary linguistic constructs open to deconstruction and comment, but always displaced from any discredited notion of an external, objective reality. The international art circuit features a huge number of knowing works that appear to address cultural or political issues, but ultimately do so in an insulated, self-referential way.

Any habitual visitor to exhibitions of contemporary art will be familiar with catalogue texts that describe the work as "dealing with issues of . . . ", issues that are more likely than not charged with political significance. Taken at face value, the theoretical claims routinely made for art imply that it cannot but effect decisive, seismic shifts in our relationship to a broad range of such issues, and hence precipitate actual change. The rather more prosaic reality is likely to be that the artwork proceeds to the next stop on the exhibition circuit, to another bout of artworld self-congratulation on its own pertinence, leaving the world outside the bubble surprisingly unscathed.

It is only fair to say that artists and theorists are not blind or indifferent to this state of affairs. Since early in the 20th century, they have been actively involved in the search for cultural alternatives that are often of necessity linked to alternative political and economic visions. Successive art movements, for example, tried to transcend the conventional workings of the art market and the system of values on which it depends. The fact that the market proved to be amazingly adaptable and resilient is no reflection on them. Which is presumably where Communism comes in.

The various artistic responses that make up the project reflect some of the diverse strands of current artistic practice. There is, for example, the idea of configuring forms of social interaction as art, an idea that has a number of influential exponents. It is a kind of grass-roots approach whereby the social space becomes imbued with the potential for constructive discussion and engagement. Built into it is the view that the social sphere, and its political potential, has been substantially lost to, distorted by, or subsumed into consumer culture.

For Communism, Seamus Nolan plans to set up a workshop in a storage area in Project. There, he aims to construct functional bicycles fashioned from some of the abandoned fragments throughout the city. It's a promising intervention that has the potential to draw an interested response and provoke reflections on ownership, altruism and public space.

More ambivalently, perhaps, Veit Stratmann's sets of office chairs, bound together in threes, "allow people to sit and move together around the building on the basis that they act collaboratively". Something about this scheme makes it sound more like a parody of communality, at once knowing and mocking.

There is an explicitly ludic quality to Declan Clarke and Paul McDevitt's concrete table tennis table, "a monument to leisure", sited on O'Connell Street until the end of February. For those who want to play, bats are available from the Dublin Tourism Information Centre nearby. The work establishes a social space in the centre of the city. It exhibits a knowingness with its reference to Mao, China and ping pong. And it also has that peculiarly artworld quality of informed, playful disengagement, not far removed from a pose of amused, ironic detachment.

Predictably, the far-flung network of anti-globalisation movements have served as a focus and stimulus for artists looking for a means of direct action. One strand of Communism, Susan Kelly's What is to be Done? is particularly close to the anti-globalisation movement. It predates this particular exhibition and it extends beyond it, reposing Lenin's question of 1902 in a neoliberal world. It has already served as a focus for a worldwide sequence of debates, and has produced a sizeable volume of response (see panel).

In recent years, more and more artists have looked to practical alternatives, devising blueprints for ways of living outside conventional structures. Klaus Weber's hypothesised building in model form is an example of this approach. Goshka Macuga and Lali Chetwynd's performance piece was effectively a homage to archetypal political and aesthetic revolutionaries, Lenin and Dada.

One of the most fascinating segments of Communism is a fold-out print based on Jim Fitzpatrick's original Che Guevara poster. The reverse of the sheet features an interview between the notably quick-witted Fitzpatrick and Aleksandra Mir tracing the tangled history of the iconic image, and, incidentally, providing an insight into the encounter between two generations of political activists.

Fitzpatrick's motivation in making and promoting his work was idealistic. It was taken from a photograph by a Cuban photographer, "Korda", and the account of its progress is engrossing. The final irony is that after his death Korda's family sold the rights to a fashion company. It is now applied to expensive garments made in Honduras. Where, Mir asks, does that leave Fitzpatrick? "On the outside looking in, where I've always been." He also exemplifies the rubric that Susan Kelly cites on political art: The only way to make political art is never to know where the art ends and the politics begins.

A seminar including speakers Maurizio Lazzarato, Hito Steyerl, Alberto Toscano and Eric Alliez will take place at Project (in collaboration with the Hugh Lane Gallery) next Saturday at 1 p.m. Attendance is free but book a place at dairne@project.ie