Global Demix iHome Studio by Matthieu Laurette / / Catalogues / 2006 / Notre Histoire
Heiser, Joerg. “ What’s for whom, and how?” in Notre Histoire. Exh. cat. Paris: Palais de Tokyo/ Paris Musées, 2006: 135-141
What’s for whom, and how?
Jörg Heiser on Matthieu Laurette
At a time when art has become a full-blown industry, artistic production that taps into mass culture still sends a flash of disgruntlement across many faces – for isn’t artistic imagination and reflection one of the last bastions against mediocre commercial culture, against the spectacle? The irony is that this is precisely how the spectacle, if one was to generalize commercial culture under that name, projects the role of the artist: romantically removed from intervention. Increasingly over the last decade, contemporary artists not satisfied with that ascription have not only produced representations of, but immersed themselves into mass culture, opening up the potential of turning the knowledge that comes from looking at how capitalism functions into something that is not just capitalism. Matthieu Laurette’s work bespeaks this fundamental insight.Since 1993, when Laurette first appeared on the French TV game show Tournez manège (The Dating Game) and, being asked what his profession was, replied „artist“, he has continued to use the media as his artistic means of infiltration and re-circulation. His point, however, is not simply to stage subversive media stunts. Rather, vice versa, he tests the elasticity of what contemporary art can – almost literally – deal with as a practice.
The abstracted circulation of money for goods for money, or money for money is fuelled by the prospect, of – obviously – profit. Matthieu Laurette discovered a strategy for not only turning the principle of value increase on its head, from gain into regress, but to make precisely that the subject of a friendly family game show. From an art project budget in Bilbao, Laurette devised a programme for Basque TV, El Gran Truque (The Great Exchange, 2000): the idea was that in a phone-in auction people could offer to buy objects in exchange for a car offered by Laurette – the highest offer would be accepted, and then in turn be presented the following week for another exchange, and so on. After a few months the series of swaps finished with the presentation of six blue glasses. What started with a car worth a small fortune ended with something you might find at a car boot sale.
Laurette’s piece bears a family resemblance with Robert Barry's Invitation Piece (1972-73): with a simple structural insertion – invitation cards being sent out that refer from exhibition to exhibition without exhibiting anything but that; exchanging commodity for commodity with a clear prospect of ‘burning’ rather than gaining value – the logic of the respective circulation is twisted and turned. While Barry parodies art’s logic of market value with art’s conventional means of circulation (invitation cards), Laurette does so with the general logic of market value in regard to consumer products (using mass media). Another example is Produits remboursés/Money-back Products (1993-2001), which involved the consummation and subsequent reimbursement of food products that feature statements like “satisfied or your money back,” systematically feeding, literally, on the companies’ gimmicky trick to promote their brand – which in turn was fodder for the media reporting about the “Freebie King.”
This strategy of turning economic and political rules of circulation against themselves also informs Laurette’s Citizenship Project (1998– ongoing), in which he investigates the requirements for obtaining legally passports of countries all over the world, and then makes this information available on a website. The experiment ultimately is a way to test the limits of the ideological foundations on which the laws governing access to citizenship are based.
For The Louisiana Repo-Purchase (2003-2004), broadcast by a local TV channel, New Orleans passer-bys were asked whether they were aware of the possible revocation of the 1803 treaty which legalized the sale of Lousiana by France to the US – the fictional info, during the Iraq war, prompting patriotic anti-French statements. In a similarly spoof vein, Laurette’s Apparition: The Today show, NBC, 31 December 2004, (Guy Debord Is So Cool!)(2004) renegotiates the critique of mass media: we suddenly see, amongst love message banners being held up by the audience of the outdoor-broadcast of the infotainment show on Rockefeller Plaza in New York, a pink poster stating “GUY DEBORD IS SO COOL!” The fluffy statement ironically plays on the fact that ritualized postures of aloofness from the spectacle – in reference to Debord’s Society of the Spectacle from 1967 – run the risk of becoming an empty, worn-out part of what they criticize. As with his numerous Déjà Vu celebrity look-alike conventions hosted on the occasion of art openings, Laurette is never the superior manipulator but mingles with his subjects on eye-level, as if reminding himself of the crucial question: what’s for whom, and how?
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