‘WITH’ – Reinventing Corporate Art
I couldn’t help but question the artistic merit of the Rokeby gallery’s latest exhibition, WITH. The description I read in the listings told me little; only that the gallery was showcasing work by a company called WITH offering ‘Life Enhancement Solutions’. How, I wondered, can a corporation also be art?
The show is clinical; it certainly doesn’t feel like art. Mainly because every piece of work, each the result of a WITH ‘solution’, is accompanied by a huge company logo. According to the blurb, each ‘solution’ involves an ‘agent’, who will engineer and live out a variety of experiences ‘on behalf’ of a paying client. It’s possible to employ a WITH agent to ‘become a child of your own’ or even to ‘create the impression that you have passed away’.
Their website is slick, but a little creepy. The contact details on the site are limited to an email address, and some of their services just seem mad. How could your life be improved, you might ask, by someone causing havoc in your name – a solution the company label ‘VIOLENTOME’? What WITH offers is so bizarre, it might be some elaborate hoax.
Thankfully, it is. WITH is an artistic collective posing as a legitimate company, mocking western society’s obsession with convenience by offering the ‘ultimate in time-saving delegation’. The artists (or ‘WITH representatives’), Alasdair Hopwood and Sean Parfitt, explain there are also a number of other ways you can interpret the project.
“It’s a critique of self help,” Sean tells me, “and it’s questioning the artist’s supposedly therapeutic role within that industry.”
On a more basic level, Sean explains, “it’s also exploring the Internet as a site for installation.”
Yet the identity of WITH still seems unclear. Despite being an art project, WITH are, in part, an active company. The current exhibition, for example, is the result of a commission from the Rokeby gallery itself. As a client of the company, the gallery has received documentary evidence of their experience – a memory stick nestled in a presentation box, photographs, and framed email correspondence. It makes for very strange viewing.
What makes this project interesting is how completely the artists have immersed themselves in the industry they’re attacking. They’ve got a professional front complete with baffling corporate jargon, and real-life clients; they’ve run recruitment fairs, marketing campaigns and have benefitted from phantom sponsors. When I ask Sean what his position is within the company he hesitates, as if unsure how to juggle the opposing roles he’s given himself.
I wonder at what point he and Alasdair are able to stop being ‘WITH representatives’ and return to the role of artist without negatively affecting the impact of their project.
WITH is clever – in the way it questions what people are willing to believe, and its eerie mimicking of corporate capitalism. But the artists have almost done too good a job: it can be hard to see exactly where the company ends and the art begins.
WITH is at the Rokeby gallery in London until October 3
Posted by Ruth Stokes in Other | September 16, 2008 6:36PM |