The Price of Radiohead

Price, Seth. “Dispersion.” 2002. 23rd April 2009. http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion2008.pdf

Radiohead. “In Rainbows.” XL, 2008.

The artist/writer performs an interesting role in the circulation of art theory, a role the art critic does not, in that they produce work that must directly confront the written criticism of their authoring and attempt to reconcile or overcome it. Seth Price leaves himself with a significant task when one considers the artistic propositions in Dispersion.

“Can one make works which are not ‘of art’” is the Duchampian question that Price asks again in the context of global media distribution. He considers the history of this project to be “a series of starts and paths that peter out.” There has been this desire to take art outside the institutions framework and combine it with life, you could say, if one considers art not ‘of life’. Price’s proposition to move practice into the expanded field but fully embrace the “generic forms” of contemporary distribution media is an interesting concept to take this desire further. When a practice becomes one with mass culture it places you in a “blind spot”. Your work begins to resemble any other product in a capitalist market and it takes the artist to either step outside with self-proclamations of the status of their work as art or an institution to recognize and remove it from the mass media culture.

I now begin to wonder; if one wants to make art that can exist or connect with culture outside of the art institution why even call yourself an artist, or call what you produce art? What does the artist find important or stimulating about being part of an art framework as opposed to existing as something else almost entirely in its true form e.g. a musician, architect, filmmaker or chemist? Is it the sense of belonging to a particular history or elitist brotherhood, or the comfort of a safe context away from the harsh reality of the “real world” and the efficient garbage processing machine of the capitalist market? If the drive to combine art and life still exists maybe one has to drop art if they want to keep the life bit.

From this I think it’s appropriate to consider Radiohead’s 2007 release of their album In Rainbows as engaging with all the ideas, structures and institutions covered in Seth Price’s piece. An independent simultaneous release, skipping promos and the press that allowed the consumer to choose the value of what they purchased successfully subverted all the established capitalist market structures while using digital distribution to its full potential. As interesting, if not more so than any Art that deals with these ideas, could this act be considered a work of Contemporary Art, or is Radiohead as a band so deeply entrenched in the market that the art world is not interested. In reality, this act does not need to be labeled art. It effectively comes full circle by subverting traditional marketing techniques which simultaneously becomes a powerful marketing strategy in its own right.