In Cadáver Esquisito: uma história de amor intergaláctico, a chapter I wrote for AIDS Sem Capa: reflexões virais sobre um mundo pós-pandemia (2022), I say:

NASA proudly landed a spacecraft on Mars early in Biden’s 1st term, yet throughout the history of space travel there has been no credible sighting of the art world and many haven’t even heard of it. The outcome I’ve been asked to pursue is therefore complicated not by a majority wanting confirmation the art world exists, but by one not caring whether its existence is proven or debunked, simply not knowing to care. Given that it might all be a hoax, the findings–I was told–should be useful in other arenas.

The so-called art world is a Janus-faced hologram at times. It presents a caricature of other markets and operates ruthlessly around capture points, such as a material work on the secondary market (brandname auction house or museum). On the other, is a horizon of artists working on/in other worlds. The art world can therefore be arrived at in a variety of ways. Formal art training seems to suggest a limited market space. Ex-art students and others help break down this illusionary space–or continuum between finance and history-lite. This is not what she said when I tapped her on the shoulder at the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai, but I remember her vision from that event: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ― Arundhati Roy

Through immersion and contemplation, I build worlds that I then place into the orbit of other art worlds. In Deleuze e Guattari terms, I make assemblages. Ernst Bloch suggested that the purpose of utopic experiments is to engage with concrete historical struggles. I prefer José Esteban Muñoz re-casting Bloch’s ideas in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009). Gramsci spoke of an interregnum that blocks the birth of the new world in his timeless Prison Notebooks (1947). While my worlds may orbit with those of other artists, something that is truly optional, they are deployed directly to that interregnum (as site of struggle) as explosive devices hoping to splinter and dislodge its blockage.

The art world can facilitate exhibitions, publications, commissions and other salary-building blocks, but so can other worlds injected with art ideas and works. These worlds should always be liberating if not liberatory; never constricting. If you should want that your art is also a form of activism (or vice versa), the majority of this work is via subterfuge, drawing value from one small orb and redistributing it to countless other orbs. In this way, world-building along with the rest of us.

tll/emk