For the Swedish artist Björn Lövin, the personal was a problem. In his first exhibition in Moderna Museet, Lövin observed through the fictitious character Mr. P (for »Personality«) the ruptures in the Swedish welfare state. The exhibition Konsument i oändligheten och Herr P:s penningar (Consumer in Infinity and Mr. P’s Money) (1971) was composed of two environments, through which a veridical working class apartment and a high street with life-sized mannequins and furniture characteristic of its time, visualized the societal discrepancies in the welfare state as well as the art world of the early 1970s. Lövin was as much a dystopian observer as a utopian thinker, where art must, according to him, engage the whole of society, and in essence change reality rather than act upon aesthetic experience. The personal is always contemporary, this essay argues. It concerns a question about the now, what Michel Foucault called »the ontology of actuality«, which means that, for Lövin, art must engage in the historical and critical questioning on how the present is configured, in its blind spots and hidden potentialities. Here, another element in the exhibition foregrounds the ontological questioning of the now: the fact that the two environments were designed as archaeological excavations in the future, representing an era before a catastrophic event. Lövin challenged us to look upon our times as if struck with amnesia. This remarkable displacement of perspective makes it possible for Lövin to not only reveal the inherent contradictions in the social conditions of the 1970s, through the harsh conditions that Mr. P represents, but to regard potentially everything, the consumer culture and all ephemeral expressions of our society – through the eyes of the future scientists – as art. Challenging the problematic notions of persona, socially determined beings or citizens, we are guided by Lövin, in a way that is not unusual of his time, to look upon »the art of the people« as synonymous with »the life of the people«. In this essay, which is one of the first in-depth analysis of Lövin, who Lars Nittve has called »the creator of some of the most important Swedish exhibitions in the last decades«, the allegorical meaning of »the art of the people« is seen as the nexus where the personal is pushed through its boundaries, to its ostensibly opposite meaning, the impersonal, in which a social utopia of the now emerges.

Dans cette thèse entreprise entre les études littéraires et intermédiales et l’histoire et la critique des arts, nous articulons le rapport de compatibilité entre l’impératif promotionnel auquel doit répondre l’artiste aux fins de promotion de son oeuvre et les conséquences éthiques générées par sa réponse. Nous y analysons notamment les réponses d’artistes dont les pratiques furent classées sous la rubrique de la critique institutionnelle. Par l’entremise d’une série d’études de cas, notre analyse couvre une période historique qui traverse la fin des années 1960 jusqu’au tournant 1990 (Marcel Broodthaers, Louise Lawler, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Andrea Fraser). Nous avons opté pour une méthodologie composite, empruntant à l’analyse du discours et à l’histoire et à la critique des arts. En prenant comme cadre de référence les dernières recherches de Michel Foucault sur les questions de l’éthique et de la critique, la portion de l’oeuvre de Judith Butler qui concerne l’éthique et la performativité, l’analyse pragmatique de Mieke Bal et les analyses sociologiques de Pierre Bourdieu, nous proposons une relecture d’une sélection d’objets littéraires et visuels issus de l’appareil publicitaire et dont le statut et la fonction sont marqués par l’ambivalence, combinant – sans en annuler l’effectivité – la critique à la promotion. Nous démontrons ainsi que les aspérités de la critique peuvent être conservés dans l’espace apriori inapproprié de la publicité, et que cette critique relève de l’éthique. En somme, nous démontrons comment l’articulation de la critique à l’éthique concerne l’ethos de l’artiste, mais aussi celui de l’universitaire. / In this thesis, written between several disciplines (intermedia and literary studies, art history and art criticism), I aim to examine the relationship of compatibility between the promotional imperative artists are compelled to adopt in order to publicize their work via institutions, artists’ response to this imperative, and the resulting ethical consequences. My analysis focuses on this response as articulated by artists whose practices are characterized by criticality and reflexivity, and who have been classified under the rubric of institutional critique. Through a series of case studies, I cover a period spanning the late 1960s to early 1990s, with a focus on the work of Marcel Broodthaers, Louise Lawler, Christopher D’Arcangelo and Andrea Fraser. I aim to address this lacuna by way of a broad-based methodological approach, drawing from discourse analysis, art history and art criticism. Using a referential framework that encompasses Michel Foucault’s later research on ethics and critique, Judith Butler’s work on ethics and performativity, the pragmatic analyses of Mieke Bal, and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological examination, I propose a rereading of several literary and visual objects that, while produced in a promotional context, are characterized by a certain ambivalence of status and function, combining as they do critique and promotion in such a way as that both modes remain operative. In this sense, I hope to demonstrate that the sometimes abrasive nature of critique can be maintained within the ostensibly unsuitable space of promotion, and that this critique is fundamentally ethical in nature. In sum, I will show how the articulation of ethical critique has bearing on the ethos of both the artist and the academic.

1) A pesquisa artística não pode se subordinar à obediência acadêmica. 2) A presença de cineastas como personagens de seus próprios filmes, interpretando seus próprios papeis, talvez seja o mais próximo que o cinema chega da performance. Essa presença, de caráter supostamente documental, se dá sempre com a consciência que o realizador/a realizadora tem da câmera, de modo que exerce o duplo papel de atorencenador (como Renato Cohen descreve o performer) ou protagonista-observador de sua própria atuação (Jorge Glusberg). A frase que dá título à esta parte da pesquisa - \"Estou na frente da câmera mas a minha cabeça está atrás dela\" - foi dita por Jean-Luc Godard durante a sua participação no filme Quarto 666, de Wim Wenders. 3) A crítica do artista tende a ser sempre individual; a verdadeira crítica só pode ser coletiva. / 1) Artistic research cannot be subordinated to academic obedience. 2) The presence of filmmakers as characters in their own movies, playing their own roles, is perhaps the closest cinema gets to performance. This presence, supposedly documentary-oriented, always occurs with the awareness that the director has of the camera, so that he/she performs the dual role of actor-director (as Renato Cohen describes the performer) or actor-observer of his own performance (Jorge Glusberg). The sentence used as title of this part - \"I\'m in front of the camera but my head is behind it\" - was said by Jean-Luc Godard while participating in the film Room 666, by Wim Wenders. 3) Artist\'s criticism tends to be always individual; the real criticism has to be collective.

This study investigates effects on the ephemeral artwork and its ephemeral quality when documented and archived. To define the ephemeral artform a definition presented by Mary O’Neill in her thesis Ephemeral Art: Mourning and Loss (2007) is used, and two ephemeral artworks are studied: Zoe Leonard’s Strange Fruit (for David) (1992-1997) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres' ”Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991). Results from these case studies are compared to each other and to Peggy Phelan’s critical stance on the possibilities of documenting time-based and performative artforms in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993). Results show that the ephemeral artwork becomes ephemeral through slow degradation and the experience this degradation generates in the observer; processes in time that cannot be documented. However, documentation can affect the observer’s experience of ”here and now,” which may alter the artwork’s communicative abilities and its effectiveness in creating a sense of presence within the passing of time. / I denna studie studeras påverkan på det efemära konstverket och dess efemära egenskap när det dokumenteras och arkiveras. För att definiera den efemära konstformen används en definition som presenteras av Mary O’Neill i avhandlingen Ephemeral Art: Mourning and Loss (2007), och två efemära konstverk studeras: Zoe Leonards Strange Fruit (for David) (1992–1997) och Felix Gonzalez-Torres ”Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991). Resultat från verkanalyser av dessa verk jämförs mot varandra samt mot Peggy Phelans uppfattning att performance-baserad konst inte kan dokumenteras i Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993). Resultat visar att det efemära konstverket blir efemärt genom sin långsamma nedbrytning och genom betraktarens upplevelse av denna nedbrytning – temporala processer som inte kan dokumenteras med exakthet. Dokumentering kan dock innebära att betraktarens upplevelse av ”här och nu” påverkas och således verkets förmåga att kommunicera effektivt om passerande tid och frambringa närvaro i nuet.

In my diploma thesis, which is called "University Qualification Thesis: MASTER'S DEGREE DIPLOMA THESIS - STUDIO PART (D), I try to fulfill the protocol, which is specified in the following points: - Get grade "D" from my diploma thesis - studio part, - If I don't get grade "D" from my diploma thesis - studio part, I did not fulfill the assignment and the goal. Therefore, the project should not be considered as successful and should be graded "F". The thesis doesn't have a visual form. The project itself is just the "concept" described in the two points mentioned above in the text including all the consequences and its progression. My creative contribution is only to induce the situation. This text is just a text part of the documentation used for easier understanding and for contextualizing. Thus, this text is a lexical (and graphical in case of the diagram shown in the full text) comment on the project and it should not be subject to evaluation. Additional form of documentation of the project will be an audio recording of defense of this project taken by a record company. My speech during the defense is also not meant to be a performace as an art discipline and therefore should not be assessed.

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'Institutional critique' is a term that refers to a range of diverse artistic practices and discourses that emerged at the end of the 1960s and that continue in the present. In spite of their differences, they all share a concern with the institutional conditioning of artists and artworks. Various historicizations of institutional critique (Alberro and Stimson, 2009; Raunig and Ray, 2009; Welchman, 2006) concur that one could distinguish two 'phases': artists of the 1960s and 1970s allegedly investigated the possibilities of an escape towards an 'outside' of the art institution, whereas those of the 1990s analysed the ways in which the artistic subject reproduced the structures of the art institution. Since the beginning of the 2000s various artists and authors have revisited the histories and legacies of institutional critique. This growing interest was triggered by the perceived intensification of a process that began at the end of the 1960s; it refers to the recuperation and neutralization of artistic types of critique by what Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) have called the 'new spirit' of capitalism. In this context, the Austrian philosopher Gerald Raunig and the members of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies have proposed the hypothesis that 'a new phase' of institutional critique was to emerge. However, this proposition was based less on empirical evidence, than on a 'political and theoretical necessity to be found in the logic of institutional critique' (Raunig, 2009, 3). This thesis is a response to this set of circumstances. By asking 'what are the conditions and possibilities of institutional critique?' it investigates the categories of institutional critique's logic. My main argument is that a 'phase change' of institutional critique could and should be understood through the apparatus of Derridean deconstruction. This implies a criticism of the idea that one needs to escape the art institution in order to respond to urgencies stemming from the social, economic, and political realms (Truth Is Concrete Platform, 2012). At the same time, I will also refute the idea that institutional critique is trapped in the art institution (Fraser, 2009a). Institutional critique works on the remainder and rest that necessarily escapes the instituting will and intention of defining and describing in an exhaustive manner the whatness of what (art) is (Boltanski, 2011). I show that between critique and the art institution there is an irreducible relation of symbiosis and cohabitation, and that the deconstructive logic of institutional critique allows it to be both partner and adversary, at the same time, of the art institution.

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