It is often brought to focus in public debates that the distribution of welfare is one of the big questions in our society. But to me that question is missing the point. Because before distribution comes production! With this I mean that we first have to discuss and search for areas that produces welfare, and that this is not predefined the way it is implied in the capitalistic model.

What is it that gives life the content we seek? We have to research and investigate the areas that give us a feeling of welfare. First after that we can begin to talk about the distribution of it. If we do search for many parallel areas that give welfare I do not think that distribution of it is such a big issue anymore. I think there would be plenty of it! We would find a never-ending source of richness, so many new areas to fulfil our desires and needs with.

Maybe we need to investigate the idea of welfare in the same way that Derrida has investigated language, and deconstructed its meaning. Maybe the concept is "in infinite", never fixed. Maybe we have to look in a way that can lead us in the same direction that lead to the kind of poetry where how it is written visually is part of the work - this is totally outside the idea of language, but add layers to poetry! Or the same way that led John Cage to introduce noise, white noise and silence into the field of music.

We use money as a tool to compare and measure value and welfare. This offers a direct comparison of the objects and services exchanged; it all becomes commodities. Capitalism has monopolised the means of comparison of welfare, and thereby given only reign to those aspects of welfare that can be commodified. This do, arguable, give a lot of possibilities as almost everything can be commodified and developed by commercialism. But the effect of commodification is limiting and enclosing and puts everything into a certain and specific register. The use of money as a comparison of value and welfare is a poor one: This because it paradigmatically rules out aspects of value and welfare. It only allows us to see certain aspects of how to live our life, how to search for knowledge and education, how to plan our spare time, how to chose job, how to make art and even what the use value of products are!

What I am getting at is that today the capitalistic society model offers the only way of living. It is the only prescribed life narrative. There are no alternative way of exchange, interaction, and way of forming our life including how to live and where live, how to get educated, what constitutes work, etc.

We lack descriptions and models of alternatives, so that they can counter weight all the capitalistic 'noise'. We need to see that there are other ways, other modes, other models of exchange, relations, purposes with our doings, and aims with our lives.

This is not to say that you no longer talk to your neighbour, lay on the beach or read a book, that is, do things that is not (directly or indirectly) under the influence of capitalism - if anything is not that! But just to say that these 'other things' does not have a model or register where we can talk about them. We talk about 'to take a year out', implying taking it out from the life narrative that is the norm, 'spare time', a time after or rather in between working hours or 'relaxing' from work. This is just some examples of how we talk about what we do.

What I want to situate here is a discussion about how art can be used to research the field of offering alternatives, or as I prefer to call it, parallels to the capitalistic society model. I want to think about functional art, that is, artists that make something in the 'real world', e.g. a bio gas system, a lamp, a free university, a second-hand clothes shop, work as a consultant, etc. Artists that have a "production of 'real existing' models or what we might term 'modest proposals' on a small scale and protected by the ramparts of the cultural experimentation enclosure." to quote from the splendid catalogue text to the 2nd Berlin Biennial by Charles Esche.

This essay is research for my art practice. It is a way of critically, with the support of theory, think through 1) my general interest in using my practice to propose parallels to the capitalistic society model and 2) specifically gain knowledge, experience and ideas for my 'Meeting Room Project'. The latter is a project to make temporary redesigns of meeting rooms to deconstruct meetings in the search for possibilities of more ethical and holistic decision-making processes.

First, I want to understand what Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt offers of analysis of contemporary capitalism, as well as look at Manual de Landa's concept of 'markets and anti-markets' and Thomas Frank's 'market populism'. Secondly, look at the way aspects of this critic is visible in companies. This by looking at one of the most popular organisation concepts called 'The Learning Organization'. Thirdly, I want to look at an art project called 'Visionindustry' were artists have acted as consultants in two companies, solving real problems. This I want to do to see what possibilities and pitfalls there can be in making functional art that works very close with a commercial business. Lastly, I want to discuss and develop 'The Meeting Room Project' further by drawing on the 'gained territory' from above.

The analysis of capitalism that will follow is not full or coherent. It is my selective search for problems and possibilities that can fuel my interest in working with businesses as an artist. I will particularly look at what the roles of companies are in capitalism, and where we are normally blinded by their 'good intentions'.

The market is the whole fundament that capitalism stands on. The market is also where democracy seemingly is placed, where liberalism proves its legitimisation. It is here that customer needs and producer abilities meet and determines what is to be produced and by whom, where prices are set freely, where advertising informs us and distribution is organised to serve us. Thomas Frank describes, as a criticism, via his term "market populism" how markets have replaced democracy, or rather how it is, as the liberals claim "a far more democratic form of organisation than (democratically elected) governments"1. The market is not only a medium of exchange but also of consent! It is the people who make up the market, and those who decide.

Therefor, the logic of this attitude is also that any criticism of business is a criticism of the common man3. "Who creates this 'consumer-driven culture' but 270 million Americans?"4 is the way to respond to any criticism of the market.

Democracy is replaced by consumer influence: Buy it or reject it. We vote by sales units. But as Manuel De Landa says in "Markets and Antimarkets in the World Economy"5 the market mechanisms of supply and demand does not apply for a majority of the market. This because companies have grown or rather have always been, so influential that they have monopoly or oligopoly (two-three companies having the majority market share). So 'Consumer Democracy' is not about choosing a company or not, but only about influence if a certain products should be produced or not!

This means that anything goes if the purpose is to 'serve the people'. By this society model, and the choice of the market as the platform for democracy, business has no responsibility for the production of value and has no ethics as such, as they only (re)act in response to consumer's wishes. Businesses seem to claim no as everything they make is based on consumer research and the mechanisms of supply and demand. More about that in my chapter about Ethics.

What we have seen the last 20 years is an enormous amount of mergers and acquisitions of companies that have resulted in concentrations of almost all industries: from markets with e.g. the top 20 companies having 50% market share, to today where only 2-3 companies have the same market share. This 'lust' for expansion or urge "to satisfy the requirements of the subsequent moment in the cycle of accumulation" as Hardt and Negri6 expresses it, is part of the nature of capitalism as it is more growth than absolute earnings a company is ranked by. An example from Empire about capitals expansion:

Negri and Hardt also describes how this constant striving for expansion by capital is linked to imperialism:

The perspective is therefor that expansion will lead to a state where all relations are supplier <-> customer relations - capitalism will strive to include all non-capitalist areas of life as well as use imperialism to include all parts of the world. It will also seek, as we see at the moment with the agreements that GATT is trying to pursue, to also make e.g. the public sector more open for private companies. Today some companies are bigger than countries, and expansion is still on top of the agenda! It is therefor only natural to see a trajectory that will lead to 'One Company in One World'.

According to Manuel De Landa capitalism has always been an anti-market, meaning that prices is not set by market dynamics relaying on demand and supply. Rather, as mentioned above, markets are controlled by monopolies or oligopolies that set the prices in a powerful economic decision-making. In other words capitalism is, according to De Landa, a 'non-competitive practice'. He therefor suggests abandoning the term "capitalism" and speaking of markets and anti-markets9.

If this observation holds, which De Landa refers to historical evidence that it does10, it has profound consequences for our perception of our liberal democratic capitalistic society model! First of all, the democracy that the market supposedly should imply which I mentioned above is manipulated and therefor an expression of power from the few corporations that control markets. Secondly, we do not have the claimed 'free choice' as markets are driven by monopoly and oligopoly corporations that is beyond competition.

Thirdly, difference is not a value that anti-market corporations subscribe to, rather, to place individuals into what is perceived as homogenic groups is the norm11. This is explained by the marketing theoreticians Stig Ingebrigtsen and Michael Pettersson12 in their analysis and definition of the marketing paradigm:

The basis that our liberal society is based on is, if we are to believe in the above, false. There is no free market, or only very small ones. So the idea of democracy via capitalism is also false. There are no consumer driven companies in general, only power concentrations that have one interest: Earnings.

At the basis of the above this concentration of power have to lead to a break! All the people employed in these corporations and those that are not must at some point see that the power or corporations are imbalanced and that ways of securing ethics must be implemented! More about how that can be done in my chapter about biopolitical production below.

In this light I want to look at ethics. Ethics is a very big subject that this text does not allow me to go fully into. I do however want to look at one aspect connected to businesses. To me it is a great myth that companies even 'some companies' are ethical as such - and the phrase 'as such' is important in my argument. In its structure or model business has no ethics, that is, if we can extract humans and their good will. It is only insofar as a business can earn money on being ethical - because enough consumers want it - that they 'use' ethics as a parameter in their marketing. Would a company make an ethical move if it meant earning less money both in the short and long run? Or, which could be an interesting study, which companies do and why? When I say "if we can extract humans and their good will" it is because some people in businesses do make 'clear cut' ethical decisions that only lead to expenses or decreased earnings. But that is not good business and not part of the business model.

Let me explain this. In the model of 'market democracy' mentioned above, ethics is made a democratic choice under "market populism", a choice of the customers not the companies. This means that the companies only follow the wishes of the customers and it is the viewpoint of the latter that is expressed in the company strategy and action. Again, from a paradigmatic angle, from Ingebrigtsen and Pettersson13:

Business serves the customers to the best of their abilities. They do this in a way that earns them the most money in the short and long run.

The following is the most important finding for me in Empire: Hardt and Negri have treated the concept of 'biopolitical production' which point to the internalisation of discipline in today's society. Foucault recognised this change in our society of how we have gone from a disciplinary society to a society of control. The disciplinary society was the

In contrast, today's society of control does not rule via the institutions that "structure the social terrain" but rather has a control that is outside the structured sites of social institutions that works through flexible and fluctuating networks15:

The important move that Hardt and Negri makes away from Foucault and via Deleuze and Guattari and others is from understanding the concept of biopolitical power to locating and describing the contemporary biopolitical production: That is where capital needs, uses and forms subjectivity to produce added value.

Let me explain this very important point. When I applied for a marketing job I went through a personality test by a consultant. When I started the job I first had to acquire the necessary functional skills to perform the job but from then on it was a matter of subjectivity. Through leadership courses, conversations with the consultant and my manager, as well as self-evaluation according to my development goals, I became aware of and was trained into having the characteristics the job demanded. It was a matter of how I performed as a person that determined my success. Robert Reich defines this type of work as "problem-solving, problem-identifying, and strategic brokering activities18.

In opposition to this I have had jobs which anybody with two hands could perform. There was no need for my attitude, ideas, creativity, etc. It was what I performed as a body, or rather a robot, that determined my success in this form of work. Just as under a tayloristic form of production.

This illustrate the shift from worker to immaterial labour where

What has also happened in this process is that information and computer technology has created temporal flexibility and spatial mobility for labour. This has "led to furious and unrestrained competition among workers" which has weakened the possibility for resistance and 'negotiation power' for the workers20.

The immaterial worker is no longer an easily replaceable operator of a machine; s/he is the actual machine. But a machine with requirements specified by capital and not independently, which I will give an example of in the next chapter about 'The Learning Organization'. But what Hardt and Negri strongly argue is that this is also the great opportunity for revolution. That the immaterial worker is the machine is also a possession of power.

A political demand that follows on from the critic of biopolitical production as well as the possibilities mentioned above is "the right to reappropriation"22: This refers to that a great deal of the means of production is now in our minds and bodies. Therefor we should have "free access to and control over knowledge, information, communication, and affects. [...] The right to reappropriation is really the multitude's right to self-control and autonomous self-production"23.

The processes mentioned above have contrary to what one would expect been supported by governments. They have outplayed their own power and left it to corporations to form subjects.

Hardt and Negri raise the banners from the mud where the radical conservatives left them with "Big government is over" but now for the purpose of communism!24. They say that the days where governments served the people and workers with redistribution of social wealth and fight for equality and democracy is over:

Hardt and Negri therefor believe in the destruction of big government, and certainly not to take it over and refine it, as this has historically lead to disasters.

Following from this it is relevant to look at an example of how businesses implement this type of power production and relations in organisations.

Organisational theory used by management to organise their companies is used to implement a structure that accounts for the external and internal pressures and needs that the company needs to deal with proactively. One big trend in this field from the 90' on is 'The Learning Organization" formulated in a book by Peter Senge that has sold more than 750,000 copies, and named him 'strategist of the century' by the Journal Business Strategy. It will take up to much space here to make a thorough analyses of how and why this theory is a form of biopolitical production exercised in businesses. But I find the organisational model important to discuss as an implementation of what Negri and Hardt means with biopolitical production26.

Peter Senge defines 'the learning organization' as

The idea behind is that in a society with situations of rapid change you have to be flexible, adaptive and productive to be a top performer. For this to happen, Senge thinks that organisations need to 'discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels28'. There have to be created an atmosphere where people can reflect and engage and where they have the tools and guiding ideas to act 'independently' in the situations they face. In other we have to be able to re-create ourselves. Therefor Senge sees people in organisations as agents that see wholes, rather than helpless reactors29.

One of the things this demands of the organisation is to define itself in a way where what it does is perceived as useful and valuable. Only through this will people want to be part of the common spirit and the commitment to strategy and results it makes as a whole. This demands that the leaders can analyse and describe these wholes as well as brake the mental assumptions the staff might have30. So the type of organisation you get is explicitly a 'consensus organisation'.

If we look at the definition above, it is the phrases "truly desire", "expansive patterns of thinking" and "collective aspiration" that springs out: The analysis we know from Foucault in this context is that the organisational structure, its rules and ideas becomes internalised by the individuals. The power that before was exercised by the manager is now within the employee - s/he knows what to do and are therefor self-disciplined! This by the knowledge we have gained.

As an employee the result might be that it is more fun to work and with greater influence and challenges, but at the cost of conforming to the required subject position. Therefor it is worth asking whether the employees know that power is being exercised and what it is that they 'give up' for the increased 'freedom'.

So what happens is that the worker is an active subject in this type of organisation, opposed to the traditional worker that was a passive object. But at the same time that subject is unveiled to power: By self reflection and self evaluation, which is part of the structure of the learning organization, power becomes internalised with the purpose of making the employee a pliable, measurable and administrable object31! To say this is only negative would be wrong as it also allows for a greater participation and freedom for the employee. It does however ring some warning bells, as there is an unresolved conflict of interest! Who should form the subject and to what?

To conclude this chapter about biopolitical production I would like to return to Negri and Hardt. What they see in this biopolitical production, except for the repressive content, is also, as mentioned above, an opportunity: The colonisation of the subject of the worker is also what opens up for the phase out of capitalism as the immaterial worker is him- and herself both producer and organiser of every aspect of production32.

When a person enters a gallery, s/he enters and artificial world, a world of representation, aesthetics, forms and grand ideas. It is not the real world, like the shopping mall, the library, kindergarten or the work environment. It is 'just' art, just something that is made to be experienced, ideas that are brought forward for you to think about. It does not ask anything of you so to speak.

In a gallery people come in, and walk out again. Very few give any comments and are not really expected to do so. Therefor, the space created with the audience is relatively artificial as opposed to everyday like or 'real'. Or as Daniel Hjorth expresses it: "Art, like science, has become locked into its corner of life, leaving great distance to the 'everyday wo/man'. As long as Art maintains a place outside everyday life, the expressive form that remains for it is shock."33

What I am interested in discussing in this chapter is how making art 'within' capitalism - as opposed to the artificial situation of the gallery described above - can explore new ways of having relations and exchange? Does this offer a way to analyse and criticise capitalism in order to propose new parallel models? Because of the ubiquity of the capitalistic paradigm, for an artist to make something in a pseudo outside which a gallery is, could be to deny ourselves the possibility of looking for alternative models of thought and ideas to capitalism?

Before going into specific art projects I would like to present two ways of talking about this way of making art. This in order to begin to establish a theoretical framework for talking about this type of praxis.

First, the Italian philosopher Mario Perniola who in his catalogue text to the 45 Venice Biennale talks about meetings between non-European and European art. He qualifies how this meeting could take place:

The reason I bring this quote is to establish the idea that for art to enter 'real life' is not a one-way transaction. It is an exchange that changes both art and life. Secondly, it is a meeting that demands openness and respect as well as a wish for change. Therefor it is also a move that, to me, demands consideration: Why and for what purpose can it be useful for art and real life to merge, or rather, work together?

The second way of talking about this meeting comes from curator and critic Charles Esche in his text for the 2nd Berlin Biennial catalogue. He discusses how the field of visual culture might be the only field left for alternative thinking.

Here he formulates how art outside theory and the art institution that engages in real life has the possibility of proposing something real. Esche also point at the "ramparts" between these two positions: theory and the art institution vs. real life. But he also situates this art practise as other from real life, as something that interacts but on different terms:

This is very crucial to this essay, and I will expand on this, as Esche points at the possibilities offered by making art in real life. He makes clear how the different paradigm of art allows it to make an alternative investigation of our society, or democratic anti-market liberalistic (DAML) society as he calls it. How art 'is there' for a different purpose than that given by capitalism. Esche draws on the very interesting proposal from Manuel de Landa in his book 'A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History' about models. De Landa suggests models that are not metaphors but "as having common physical properties with the systems they are trying to describe"37. By entering real life and by taken on the forms of real life, art has the possibility of describing and making visible other areas than what is otherwise visible:

With this, well, great opening for art to actually have a socio-political impact I would like to present an art project that is within this realm.

The project I would like to discuss is a consultancy task called 'Visionindustry'. The project springs out of a county project to reduce one-sided repetitive work (ORW), and an interest in seeing how art can participate in this process. It was implemented in the Danish companies Basta and LK that have resp. 60 and 250 manual factory workers.

The project is a co-operation between Democratic Innovation, BST, which is a governmental working health and safety organisation, Arbejdsliv Teknologisk Institut (ATI), which is a self-governing consultant institution that advise on work environmental issues, LO, the umbrella organisation for Danish unions and Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum, a local art museum.

Democratic Innovation (DI) is an art company run by the artist Kent Hansen. He defines it as an ad-hoc organisation of different artistic strategies - with the purpose of creating and joining possibilities in social structures and actions.39 Please see www.demokratisk-innovation.dk

Following on from the discussion above, Kent Hansen fully believes in arts potential in real life. He also strongly recommends that artists working in the art institution and who talk about what they want to change in the real world should actually enter the real world with concrete projects.

The reason why I have chosen this project is that it is 'hard-core' in the real world and has a real utility result. Also that artists work together with a business, and that it is both a business project and a following exhibition at a museum as a documentation of the project. Lastly, it is very well documented.

DI invited two Danish art groups to participate in the concrete project to reduce ORW: Superflex on LK and N55 on Basta.

Superflex is a Danish art group with three members and a lot of paid and unpaid volunteers. They have set up a real company that produces biogas system to countries where they normally use a fireplace to cook. They have started some twenty Superchannels that is a live and interactive internet broadcast station. They see their projects as tools; therefor they do not control the content of e.g. what is broadcasted at Superchannel. Everybody can use their system to broadcast. Please see www.superflex.dk

N55 is a Danish/Swedish/Norwegian art group with four members that all live together. They work with concrete situation with relevance for daily life. They are interested in breaking down power concentrations. They e.g. design environmental friendly bath, WC, shelves, lamps, living units, etc. They do not sell their works. Please see www.n55.dk

At LK there were a wish to increase the internal communication in a new and groundbreaking way, as the management expressed it, as they wanted a solution they could not think of themselves. At meetings in the project group (DI, Superflex, ATI, a HR co-ordinator and the workers) a lot of ideas were produced and it was decided to call the project 'Supercontact'40 and the concept 'The Wise Oak'. The idea was to build a noise-free house at a platform in the factory with e.g. a PC for network radio broadcasts, a meeting room, a place for anonymous ideas, a mood-indicator, notice board and a flag pole for 'raise a flag'. But the principal project became to increase communication by using oral communication instead of intranet. This was suggested done by using headsets and a radio broadcast technology.

The suggestion was outside the frame set both economically and organisational wise. The management appreciated the idea very much but had to put the project on hold as another big project would take all resources.

At Basta N55 created a communication room using their 'Public Things' which are functional furniture that can be used in a lot of different ways. The room was used for a notice board, PC with internet access, music, a mattress for relaxing, etc.

In the project process it was decided to make a homepage, a common eating club, a group that would develop a bike that 30 of the employees could sit on at the same time, and a garden group. The process was stopped as Basta decided to stop the production in Denmark. The communication room was however used after the project was ended. It was suggested that N55 could take part in the process of helping the fired workers to think untraditionally in their thoughts for the future!

Superflex wanted to create a freespace within the company (LK) that had other values than those that is present in the factory normally. A freespace that went beyond the existing structures and hierarchy. They say that the democratic process created in our society is not present at a business41.

N55 wanted to use the two hours pr. week that the management had released for the project for other doings. Their goal in general is to break down concentrations of power and therefore also economic concentrations of power, and at Basta they wanted to create a consciousness that would lead to self-empowerment, or as they explicitly expressed it "consciousness about the fact that concentrations of power are dominating our society": How to actively take a stand towards what the company offered.42

Democratic innovation organised the project and as such was a mediator between the artists and the companies. Kent Hansen wanted to inject a combination of a subjective and objective method in the companies - contrary to the objective scientific method used normally in economics. With this the goal was to democratise the companies by qualifying the personal reality of the worker and giving it status and value. The idea is that art projects of this kind have a potential for critique, development and change with a benefit for the employees focusing on the realisation of democracy within the corporate world as well as in society in general.43

I will now go into the observations about the projects to see what can be used in an analysis of the project. I am particularly looking after what happens in the paradigmatic meeting between art and business44. With this I mean how these two parties have different world-views and aims with the project and with their practice in general. In the rapport45 that evaluates the two processes at LK and Basta a lot of interesting issues are raised. I will shortly go through the findings and after that comment on them:

The rapport seems very much to be written from the business point of view - which is looking at the artists. What could be said in general about the comments is that a meeting between two 'cultures' has taken place. Although the aim of the project had been agreed beforehand as well as the project design e.g. time schedules, types of meetings, participants, etc. - it was in the access to how such a task is solved that unveiled differences.

The greatest challenge for the workers seems to have been about how to function in the 'artist process' and to learn from that, rather than solving the predefined task of reducing ORW or increasing communication.

It seems like that it generally were the artists that aimed higher and wider than the workers did. The artists were blamed for being to visionary, and here it is interesting to think about what the artists aimed at as mentioned above! Maybe they tried to solve more general problems than the workers who needed specific problems solved. Both artists groups are very well articulated in societal and political discourses, and are used to working close together and communicate with other parties. But contrary to being curated to make a show, were it is the 'problem' of the artist group that needs being solved, they were invited to take part in solving someone else's problem.

Both N55 and the workers at Basta have been interested in bringing the work life and private life closer together. In the rapport in the evaluation section it is mentioned that "there have been created a greater connection and integration between the workers values at work and their sparetime". This is mentioned as an implicitly positive thing! It was a clear aim for N55, but not for the reason of integrating work and life. Rather, they wanted to utilise the possibility that was created by Basta's management - with the two hours pr. week for the project - to give the workers other inputs46. In a way this both served the goal of N55 and Basta, as the latter wanted to increase communication and this was possible being away from the machines and together!

In general, it seemed that the idea with artists working with the workers was perceived as a good idea. It seems as if the values ascribed to the artists as mentioned above were somewhat enough to trigger a new and different process! That the fact that the artists came from a different position, which was specifically not the position of the managers, was a sound input in opening up for other social forms. From my short interviews with N55 they say, without defining it further, that the meeting with the workers has been very important to them, and that it was proved how "unworthy and fragile their (the workers, ed.) circumstances were".

What seems to me to be of importance with this project is that the artists have managed to introduce new values in the companies. There is a sense of that the meeting itself, and not the project specifically, has triggered new ways of thinking. That the workers have got not an increased, but a different perspective and sensibility towards what happens around them. This is hard to document and is more a feeling I have got from all my conversation with Kent Hansen, N55 and from the interviews and texts.

The question that stands back to me is whether the artists groups have fulfilled their goals? In the light of my analysis of capitalism above I would like to discuss how 'Visionindustry' works within that discourse as a way of talking about their goal fulfilment:

Democracy: Superflex, N55 and DI explicitly wanted to introduce democracy into the companies, as they do not recognise businesses as democratic. The tactic used was to empower the workers rather than speaking their case for them.

Power Concentration via Anti-Markets: N55 have the declared goal to break with power concentrations but in the project at Basta they only had the possibility of increasing the consciousness of the workers about this. How that worked is unknown to me. But as the production was moved to Holland and China as a result of a merger, and most of the workers fired, the effect of a power concentration was unexpectedly present!

Ethics: There is a close connection between democracy and ethic as both are concerned with common values and a form of social contract47, and in this way both projects are concerned with ethics. As a note I suspect that the two hours pr. worker pr. week that the management of Basta gave the project was given well knowingly that they were going to close the production down.

Biopolitical production: All three artists/artist groups had the goal of empowering the workers, and worked for that in the projects. This as a way of securing them their subject positions and 'reappropriation' of e.g. access to information. The communication platforms they suggested to create were formed with internet access an internal radio channel and a homepage that could link the workers with other workers in other companies. I do not know if the artists are familiar with the concept of biopolitical production but it is very interesting that access to communication and linking is part of their goal to democratise the workplaces.

LK is a company that have worked very much with 'flat structures', 'self-managed groups', and other HR trends that are related to 'the learning organisation'. In this way the workers, that are not immaterial workers and that do not posses the production machines, are caught between two historical movements: a non-production-machine-owning manual worker whose subjectivity is being used by capital!

With this analysis of 'Visionindustry' we have seen how artists can propose "real existing models", and interact with the purpose of "transformation of character trait, style and quality" to refer to Esche and Perniola from my introduction to this chapter.

In the following I would like to use the above to further develop a project called "The Meeting Room Project" which I work on as an artist and especially see how I can 'qualify' the project. This I will explain in a bit, but first a presentation of the idea:

The idea is to redesign meeting and seminar rooms in cultural institutions and companies. I want to use the meeting room as a symbol of the decision making process where decision about actions and attitudes are taken.

This in order to discuss the restrictions and possibilities this room offers for an organisations interest in being ethical. I mean ethical specifically as a holistic paradigm in opposition to the business paradigm. That is, a position where employees gain a larger control over the biopolitical production and its tools as well as a more viable societal development including e.g. environmental and ethical issues. Where an ethical agreement between company and staff share the subject development and secures the staff information about the companies' intentions as well as power over it.

What I do not want to do is to make companies better and more creative in making unethical decisions!

So the project aims at deconstructing the meeting as an institution, for organisations that wants to be more ethical. The latter is important as I only see it pragmatically possible for me to introduce such a philosophical process if the organisation is already in this mode.

I would then like to introduce two examples of this project. One which was implemented for a seminar in Denmark and the other which is a proposal for Documenta11.

For a seminar about the social and political potential of art at Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik I worked with the artist FOS to

• De-centre power

• Make it possible for most people to see each others faces

• Offered different physical ways of participating

Below is the plan we made for the layout of the seminar and a photo:

We tried consciously to reject the traditional and business invented way of having talks and panel discussions: Normally all in the audience look at the other participants' neck and the faces of the speakers. The talk, and also the most likely talkers under the discussion, comes from the panel at the end of the room. Also, everybody sit in the same way, at the same chairs, pointing in the same direction. These features of the set-up were changed.

The experience from the seminar was very positive and very well received. It was a very intimate seminar, and for one with 90 people it had a really good discussion. We did however consider the role of the moderator as being to powerful for what we thought was useful. Also we did not inform the speakers about our intention with the seating layout which both caused some confusion and did not fully work to our intentions: Not all left the speakers tables to go back and sit among the audience as!

For Documenta I specifically addressed the way the Platform talks through a contemporary social and political problem oriented agenda have pointed towards the actual exhibition. From this agenda I presume that the exhibition will show how visual art deal with these pressing issues. Therefor I found it relevant to consider the forums where decisions making and information exchange will take place. I suggested to work with the internal meeting rooms of Documenta, the rooms for the public discussion and talks, and 'satellites' around Kassel town where people would be expected to have meetings during Documenta, e.g. an annex to a café.

I quote from my proposal to Documenta:

What is important to me at this stage is not so much to suggest actual forms but to get a deep insight into the problems and possibilities that the project houses, and then let the artistic and forming process work more intuitively. Also because I want to context relate the solutions by talking to users, sense the spaces, and use other types of research.

The two examples above are from cultural institutions. What I want to discuss now is ideas to how this project can be carried out in a business. In working with a commercial company I want to make the redesign of the meeting room temporary and include some kind of discussions about ethics and biopolitical production. That is, somehow empower the position of the employees and in that process create awareness about the difference between the business and the holistic paradigm. I want to make it temporary because of the nature of the project as a form of 'heterotopia'. This I will return to in a bit.

But first I would like to share my motivation for doing this project. Why is it I want to use my, well let us just call it, 'creativity' to work for a business? And who says that the employees want my 'help and good intentions to enlighten' them about the pitfalls and possibilities of immaterial labour or ethics? Along those lines, what is it that I can contribute with that will make the management of a business interested in and pay for a co-operation with me?

First of all, many businesses demand artists to work with these days, which is an opening. But more importantly, many companies are in the process of widening their world-view and introducing a holistic management as well as more viable development processes. So maybe, which is what I need to test, the process that I want to start is in line with what some businesses want. But they might search for ways of doing it, and this is where visual art can enter a co-operation. But no matter the demands and openings, I see it as my ethical responsibility to participate in the democratisation of our world and to secure the position of every individual. As I have argued a bit here and in earlier essays I think functional art has a greater potential for me to do that.

In entering the business context and having gone through the analysis of capitalism and 'Visionindustry' above, the following questions have arised:

The space does not allow me to go into all these questions. What I want to do here is to use the theory of heterotopia to help me think about the space that I want to create.

I would like to introduce the idea of this project as an injection of a 'heterotopia'48 into the work place. Heterotopia is a concept used by Michel Foucault and here I want to use it to mean a kind of realised utopia, a radical other place, a place of rapture and a space for resistances to the house it visits.

This heterotopia, which form is yet consciously undecided, is a place for the meeting participants to rethink their place of enunciation: What is a meeting, which paradigm is it a part of, what is its purpose, what is their personal aim and how does that correspond and conflict to that of the company, what can be expressed here and what can be expressed by them each individual, etc.?

I want to work together with the staff in the specific company to develop a project that incorporates the strategy of the company for new values. My co-operation partners, e.g. other artists, and me will use the role as artist to infuse an aesthetic, functional and process oriented 'ethicalisation process'. With this I refer to the experience from 'Visionindustry' about how differences in processes and visions between artists and businesses can start new ways of thinking. We will consciously use this to provoke processes, values and ideas, both for the company and us.

The question is then what form redesign of the meeting room should take to 'transform' it into a heterotopia? How can it both do that and accommodate the questions I want raise? Also, how far in the estrangement of the room can I go before it begins to work against dialogue and inspiration, and how far do I have to go for the transformation to take place?

Another idea from Empire about how labour can form networks, share information and in that way further the control over our subject development. In 'Visionindustry' they proposed a homepage so that they could share experiences with other companies. This as well as going into the meetings the company has with suppliers, share holders, the board, customers, public authorities, job seekers and other parties would be important. Also to arrange seminars, experience groups where staff meet from different companies and write articles.

Since the beginning of the 90s an increasing number of companies have worked with 'Ethical Accounts'. The idea is that the management, employers and other parties, e.g. share holders, partners and customers, in a company decide what ethical values they company should have. This is then revised every year in the 'Ethical Accounts' which is part of the normal accounts. The areas can be social responsibility, global health, human rights, environmental, etc49. It is this kind of processes I am interested in. Where the methods and processes art can offer can be used to increase the possibilities for success in the area of ethics. It is here I can contribute with the experience visual art has gained.

There are many other traits to follow up from analyses of this text. And which ones will prove to be viable, relevant and possible will have to be tested in 'real life'.

The more I write on and read for this research the closer I get to an urge for 'doing it', for actually going out there and initiate the project. This feeling of 'the limit of writing' is quite interesting in the process of taking this course, the MA Art History (twentieth Century) at Goldsmiths, as a practitioner and artist. The experience I have had in the period where I have made 'functional art' is that the so-called 'visual research' is immensely important. It is here art proves its legitimisation towards e.g. a business: When by being there, interaction, physicality, non-aimed processes, alien placements, limit breaking, ignorance to 'how to', visual forming and encounters, and generally trying 'things' out it happens! We experience the gap, the seam, the interstice that our sensitivity will catch.

When I read through this text I truly acknowledge all the very important analyses and interpretations it has lead to. But, as described, it lacks. Not only because it has not been realised, but because the research has to step into the next phase: What we could call the visual research, in lack of a better phrase.

Kenneth A. Balfelt

27 September 2001

Notes