How cultural hegemony and the art market prevent artists from accessing the economy of their sector and alienate the creative process in favor of object manufacturing.
After years of traveling to explore the international underground, alternative and institutional art scenes, the assessment observed was that artists all over the world have the same disarray in the face of institutions and the hierarchy they impose.
Underground and alternative cultures have always existed in the shadow of cultural institutions because they are not represented by any large structure. The archiving of these cultures is difficult and through this lack of organization, we keep losing a huge part of our history and our culture.
Cultural institutions are mostly supported by large financial groups that curb any politicized artist to standardize and restrict thought, gaze and culture.
Western cultural institutions colonize the international scene in order to impose their culture and thus delimit the field of possibilities for foreign artists. arto wants to offer each artist the opportunity to exhibit their work without submitting to social duty or going through long and very selective administrative procedures. By social duty, we mean the duty to scour openings, to display oneself in order to sell oneself to philanthropic patrons who like to show off surrounded by artists. To do this, the artist will have to adapt his speech and his work in the hope of an investment in his future which too often remains illusory.
The art market represents more dead artists than alive and rotates with the same catalog of listed artists, from fair to fair. The art market alone symbolize the excesses of the capitalist system. The more capitalism bends over to economic excesses, the more the economic repercussions trickle down to the art market. The current system hosts handful of artists and is biased towards yielding high benefits of the economy in their favor. The sale of such art is used as a smokescreen to hide global taxes and enable money laundering.
The committee of the cultural sector guarantee artistic judgement and decide by a subjective, often corrupted system on who is an artist, what should be considered as art today and which form of art should be supported more in the future.
There are a dozen people who live from the cultural sector between an artist and his work, except for the artist himself. This is how 99% of artists find themselves freed from their sector and their market.
Why should the power be with such a committee who cannot exist without the artist? What if Art invaded the streets? What if artists regained power by being the main players in their market?