Art Rules (Number 7)

“Art’s the rule, cash the tool…”

In 2006, Douglas Gordon (b. Glasgow, Scotland, 1966) collaborated with the all-female performance ensemble, Chicks on Speed (formed in Munich, Germany, 1997) and the Viennese DJ Christopher Just (b. Vienna, Austria, 1968) on the release of a 12” electro-pop single titled Art Rules! The song’s lyrics use humour to critique the commercialisation of art by satirising the speculative practices, conspicuous consumption, and celebrity culture that characterise aspects of the contemporary art market. Art Rules subsequently developed into a multimedia project encompassing Chicks on Speed’s signature use of video, costume, choreography, stage design and self-made objektinstruments, and culminated in a series of performances at MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, TBA21, and Yvon Lambert, amongst other institutions, between 2006 and 2009.

The evolution of Art Rules! from a self-published single to multi-institution-funded performance piece allowed Chicks on Speed to interrogate the mechanisms through which cultural forms are produced, circulated, and commodified, from within the institution itself. The performance drew on legacies of avant-garde performance practices, including Dada, Fluxus, and Situationism, rejecting convention in favour of experimentation to reassert art’s critical function and transformative potential.

Gordon’s photographs depict the artist alongside Christopher Just and members of Chicks on Speed—Melissa Logan, Alex Murray-Leslie, Anat Ben David, Kathi Glas, and A.L. Steiner—in a series of staged compositions. Grouped together, the images emulate the stylistic conventions of professional promotional images typically used to express and disseminate a band’s image. By creating images using techniques from an array of cultural fields, most notably music, fashion, craft, and technology, Chicks on Speed test the limits of artistic production. As a result, their practice embodies art’s absorption of diverse methods of image production in the 21st century.

Art Rules! can be regarded as part of Chicks on Speed’s larger gesamtkunstwerk, whilst echoing themes which form the basis of Douglas’ own practice. Douglas’ role in the project mirrors his adoption of characters elsewhere in his work, and is in keeping with his interest in doubling, or the existence of multiple selves. Art Rules! also reflects the artist’s preoccupation with the relationship between context and meaning, one which drives his exploration of classic cinema in art. He says, “I like to construct self-destructive systems, or mechanisms, which can only lead towards a multiplicity of meanings, a series of contradictory interpretations. I like a conspiracy of circumstances that can help construct a meaning for a work, or that can turn against it at any moment.” (Douglas Gordon, “…in conversation: jan debbaut and douglas gordon,” in Douglas Gordon: Kidnapping (Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, 1998), 23, quoted by Michael Darling in “Love Triangulations” in Douglas Gordon, org. Russell Ferguson, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge Mass.; London: MIT Press, 2001.)

Text by Elsa Gray