This dossier is distributed as supplemental material for the workshop

“Artists Have The Answers?,” taking place in Vienna and online 29.–30.10.2021.

Materials were gathered over the past months from a variety of sources — news articles,
textbooks, contributions from participating consultants, failed grant proposals from the
organizers, etc.

We invite you to approach this document in any way you find it useful or inspiring. It is by no
means required reading. We hope it serves as a starting point for what will become a broader
archive as the project continues.

We thank you for joining this workshop and look forward to sharing ideas and energies
with you.

— Artist Project Group

If the purpose of this workshop was

to co-found of a revolutionary

consulting agency cooperative,

what services would you offer

based on your practice? With what

kinds of problems would like to

be approached, with which clients

would you want to work?

Who would you perform to be as

a consultant? Or how would you

argue in opposition to joining such

an COOP?
 1030 Wien | Marokkanergasse 7 | Postadresse: Arsenal Objekt 16 top. 77
+43 676 72 73 704
RobertStrohmaier.at
rs@robertstrohmaier.at
UID: ATU62211546

SOLUTIONFOCUSSED WORK
13 WAYS TO FACILITATE PARTICIPANT ANSWERS

Suppose that participant questions in workshops are really forerunners of the participant’s own
answers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover that the answer lies within the person who
asks?

Below you find some respectful ways to raise likelihood that participants develop their own
fitting answers and become reinforced in their own resource to do so.

/ I trust that you have no clue about the answer to this question. Suppose you knew
the answer, what might it be?

/ I suppose that you might already have an inkling of a beginning of the answer. What
can you tell me about this beginning that has been forming inside you?

/ I am happy to answer your question of course. Just to be sure I do not repeat

anything you already know: what shall I leave out, because it is already clear to you?

/ Oh, an interesting question indeed! On a scale from 1 to 10. 1 meaning: ‘you do not
have the slightest idea of an answer’ and 10: ‘this question is all solved’; what would
you say where you on the scale right now? – I see and being at x, what is already
clear to you?

/ Just as a first shot at it: How would you answer your own question?

/ I have no idea! Who in the group could share some insights from their experience?

/ I don’t understand your question. Can you give me a concrete example and tell me
what you actually did in that situation?

Seite 1/2
 1030 Wien | Marokkanergasse 7 | Postadresse: Arsenal Objekt 16 top. 77
+43 676 72 73 704
RobertStrohmaier.at
rs@robertstrohmaier.at
UID: ATU62211546

/ I am so curious about your thinking behind this question is. Would you mind telling
me a little bit about how this question is relevant to you?

/ If I promise to tell you everything that is going through my mind… before I do so …

I’d be curious to hear your own pieces of an answer.

/ I am really impressed by this question! Especially by……. Asking this question, you
must be really clear about a lot relevant things. Can you tell me about them?

/ A colleague of mine would call this ‘a golden question’! A question so precious that it
would be a pity answering it too soon, because the process of discovery could be
promising. Would you mind keeping this question in mind for a while, and let me
know what you find out?

/ This seems to be a question that you carry with you for a long time already. How did
you already phrase the wording of the question differently this time compared to
earlier versions of your question?

/ May I ask back? What answer from me would you need, so that this answer would be
most use-/helpful for you?

Concept by © Peter Szabo, Solutionsurfers, 2011

Seite 2/2
 "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish
ties."
XXI "'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a
It was then that the fox appeared. little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I
"Good morning," said the fox. have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you,
"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if
he turned around he saw nothing. you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique
"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree." in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a
flower... I think that she has tamed me..."
"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of
things."
"Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince.

"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very
pretty to look at."
"I am a fox," the fox said.
"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so
unhappy."
"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."
"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.
But, after some thought, he added:
"What does that mean — 'tame'?"
"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking
for?"
"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean
— 'tame'?"
"Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very
disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are
you looking for chickens?"
"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that
mean — 'tame'?"
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
"On another planet?"
"Yes."
"Are there hunters on that planet?"
"No."
"Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"
"No."
"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men
hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike.
And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as
if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that

55 56
will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back
underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.
And then look: you see the grain­fields down yonder? I do not eat bread.
Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me.
And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how
wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is
also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to
listen to the wind in the wheat..."
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
"Please — tame me!" he said.
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much
time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men
have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready
made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy
friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend,
tame me..."
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down
at a little distance from me — like that — in the grass. I shall look at you
out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the
source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every
day..."
The next day the little prince came back.
57
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the
fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at
three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as
the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and
jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just
any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet
you... One must observe the proper rites..."
"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.
"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are
what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours.
There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they
dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I
can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just
any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never
have any vacation at all."
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure
drew near —
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any
sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the
wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours
is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I
will make you a present of a secret."
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing.
No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox
when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other
foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the
world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not
die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose
looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone
she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it
58
is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass
globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it
is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that
we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to,
when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said
nothing. Because she is my rose."
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple
secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential
is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so
important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose — " said the little prince, so
that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not
forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You
are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he
would be sure to remember.

59

Die Idee von Idee
Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip
Sabine Fischer
Ideen sind die Nährlösung des sogenannten digitalen Transformationszeitalters und die
bedeutendsten Güter unserer Zeit (Fischer 2017). Wie kann man sich ihnen also adäquat
nähern, um ihre Entwicklung und ihr Fortleben qualitativ zu gestalten ohne sich zu be-
grenzen? Wie kann man Sicherheit erlangen in einem Umfeld des Neuen, das Sicherheit
ausschließt? Diese Frage stellt sich für die Medienwirtschaft ebenso wie für Marken aller
Couleur, für Branchen, für ganze Ökonomien, für die Gesellschaft, für unsere Politik und
für eine lebenswerte Zukunft aller.
Dass wir die Welt seit mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten maßgeblich verändern, ist bekannt.
Ideen, Innovationen oder Disruptionen sind zwar noch nicht überall Tagesgeschäft, dafür
aber die Anwendung jeder Theorie oder Handlungsanweisung zu ihrer Erstellung und Eta-
blierung. Betroffen von der Erneuerung ist alles: die Ökonomie mit ihren Produkten, Her-
stellungsprozessen und Organisationsstrukturen, Politik, Gesellschaft und die Medien, die
den Ausdruck des Digitalen einst via Internet erst bekannt und gesellschaftsfähig machten.
Wir sorgen uns heute in einer blühenden Landschaft von wissenschaftlich wie pragma-
tisch durchdrungenen oder einfach heilsversprechenden Werken und Beratungen mitei-
nander darum, Orientierung und Erkenntnis in und über unsere Erfindungen zu erlangen,
zu behalten oder weiterzuentwickeln. Wir erschaffen, um das komplexe Zusammenspiel
all unserer Ideen zu erkennen und zu verstehen, neue komplexe Systeme, die beispiels-
weise als Künstliche Intelligenz leisten sollen, was wir allein mit unserem Verstand nicht
mehr leisten können. Dabei nimmt der Hunger nach Neuem, nach Ideen, ungebremst zu.
Jedes Neue hier zieht Neues dort nach sich. Kaum eine Softwareidee, die nicht weltweit
einen Schmetterlingseffekt auslöst. Einen Effekt, der sich ohne Rücksicht auf Branchen
oder andere Ordnungssysteme, die wir zum Verstehen unserer Welt brauchen, ausbreitet.
S. Fischer (*)
Berlin, Deutschland
E-Mail: fischer@idea-economy.de
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2020 213
S. Dänzler, T. Heun (Hrsg.), Marke und digitale Medien,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27908-0_12
214 S. Fischer
Ob Blockchain und Token, Data Science, KI oder Deep Learning – wir versuchen also,
ausgehend von den sichtbaren Ideen, durch die diese Schlagworte Bekanntheit erlangen,
immer auch Handlungsanweisungen zu gestalten, die weitere Ideen und damit Erfolge
nach sich ziehen sollen. Wir suchen in gelungenen Ergebnissen nach der Währung, die
Innovation und Wachstum ermöglicht. Wir suchen im Neuen das Bekannte, um die Poten-
ziale des Neuen verstehen, analysieren und vervielfältigen zu können. Wir suchen die Si-
cherheit des Erfolges in einer Welt, die vor Neuheiten nur so aus den Nähten platzt. Die
Paradoxie des Neuen ist es aber, dass das Neue neu ist, weil es neu ist. Mit Sicherheit ist
das unsicher. Ergo kann die Qualität von neuen Ideen nicht über die Analyse von Erfolgs-
kriterien gemessen werden. Was aber kann eine Wissenschaft vom Neuen sein?
Die Arbeit an der Idee von der Idee und damit an Ideen ist ein wegweisendes Quer-
schnittthema, das alle betrifft und angeht: In diesem Beitrag wird das Wesen von Idee, die
Idee von Idee erklärt. Denn zu wissen, was Ideen sind, bedeutet „neue“ Ideen gestalten
zu können.
1 Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis von Ideen
Die Entschlüsselung des Wesens von Idee ist der Schlüssel zum Verständnis von Ideen.
Die Ideenökonomie beschäftigt sich mit dem Wesen von Idee und hat eine Denkordnung
etablieren können, mit der wir ausgehend vom Wesen von Idee die Qualität jeder Idee von
ihrer Entwicklung bis zur Realisierung ebenso sichern können wie für ihren laufenden
Betrieb, wenn sie Innovation oder schlicht Alltag geworden ist. Was die Ideenökonomie
ebenso wenig leisten kann wie Kreativmethoden, -techniken oder – prozesse, ist es, garan-
tiert gute Ideen einfach zu produzieren.
Die Qualität von Ideen liegt in ihrem durch und durch logischen, schlüssigen, sich
selbst erfüllenden Wesen begründet. Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip, das hier erläutert wird und
dessen methodische Anwendungsbereiche dargestellt werden, ist das der Ideenökonomie
zugrunde liegende Prinzip. Als Meta-Prinzip bildet es das Wesen von Idee ab, die Idee von
Idee. Methodisch kann jede Idee durch das Prinzip in allen Prozessschritten der Ideenent-
wicklung gestaltet und ihre Qualität gesichert werden. Ebenso wie alles Existente, das
einmal eine Idee war oder noch in Form einer Innovation als Idee bezeichnet wird auf ihre
Schlüssigkeit und ihre Bedeutung geprüft – und modifiziert – werden kann.
Es geht darum, uns bereits in der Ideenentwicklung das logische und explizite Kon-
strukt zu vergegenwärtigen, das Idee in unserer Erwartungshaltung und unserem Verständ-
nis ist oder sein soll.
Maßgeblich liegt dieser Ideenforschung der Gedanke zugrunde, dass jeder Ideenbe-
griff – von der rein rhetorischen Verwendung beispielsweise in der Werbung „Immer eine
gute Idee“ (Reidel 2013) über den intentionalen Begriff der Ideenfindung in ungezählten
Arbeitsprozessen bis hin zur sogenannten „großen Idee der Menschheit“ – durch das
D’Artagnan-Prinzip berücksichtigt ist.
Die Idee von Idee 215
2 Das Problem von Idee
Unverstandene Ideen sind verlorenes Potenzial (Fischer 2017): Die exponentiell wach-
sende Menge an Neuheiten, die unser digitales wie analoges Zeitalter bestimmt und er-
folgreich macht, ist so komplex, dass bereits die Komplexität nach neuen Ideen zu ihrer
Beherrschbarkeit verlangt. Wir begegnen allem mit immer neuen Ideen. Ideen sind unbe-
nommen die bedeutendsten Güter unserer Zeit. Wir leben im Ideenzeitalter (Fischer 2017)!
Die zeitgenössische Bewältigungsstrategie dieses Ideenzeitalters besteht wie bereits
dargestellt aus ungezählten Anleitungen, Techniken oder Methoden zum kreativen Arbei-
ten, Leitfäden zur Bewerkstelligung von diversen Ideen-Prozessen (z. B. Creative Met-
hods, Design Thinking, Disruptive Innovation Methods, Speculative Everything, Design
Sprints …), die sich teils hervorragend, teils aber bedeutungslos in den Markt stürzen.
Wichtig aber bleibt: Jeder kann und muss kreativ sein (ein Gedanke, der einer bahnbre-
chenden Rede J.P. Guilfords von 1950 zu verdanken ist) (Guilford 1955, S. 444–454)!
Entsprechend umfangreich ist die Auseinandersetzung mit Ideen, die sich in den Fel-
dern der Kreativitäts- (Guilford 1955, S. 444; Gladwell 2002) und Innovationsentwick-
lung (Brodbeck 2006, S. 253; Geschka 2006) sowie in jenen des Ideen- (Zerfass 2009),
bzw. Innovationsmanagements (Kerka und Draganinska-Yordanova 2009, S. 27–28) wie-
derfinden. Entlang der Ideen-Prozesskette sind nicht nur aus unzähligen Blickwinkeln
ebenso unzählige Theorien, Methoden und Prinzipien entstanden, sondern auch Organisa-
tionsformen wie Labs, Acceleratoren, Inkubatoren und Ähnliches. Es herrscht also kein
Mangel an Hilfe zur Ideenfindung – nicht nur als Nährboden einer florierenden Wirtschaft.
Wer die Entwicklungen dieses regen Treibens lange beobachtet und begleitet hat, weiß
wohl, dass keines der Systeme als Erfolgsgarant in die Geschichte der Innovationsent-
wicklung Einzug hielt. Aber wir wissen, dass hinter jeder herangewachsenen, bemerkens-
werten Idee ausdauernd harte Arbeit, Scheitern und Lernen, ein unerschütterlicher Glaube
und der ungebrochene Mut derer liegen, die sich durch langatmig entbehrungsreiche und
erschütternde Zeiten kämpften, um die Idee dann doch ans Licht zu bringen.
Und obwohl wir so etwas wie Entwicklungshilfen für die Gestaltung von Ideen erfun-
den haben, wissen wir, wenn wir auf der anderen Seite des Tisches sitzen, ohne Zweifel,
dass nicht alles Idee ist, was wir als Idee präsentiert bekommen. Wir wissen auf den Punkt
und extrem schnell, was keine Idee ist, obwohl sie uns als solche angekündigt wurde.
Denn eine Idee existiert für uns alle nur, wenn sie von uns umgehend als Idee wahrgenom-
men wird.
Wahrnehmen heißt hier, die Bedeutung der Idee zu verstehen, ihre Absicht als origi-
nelle Lösung eines verständlichen Problems, einer nachvollziehbaren Herausforderung,
welche etwas unverhofft Neues und eine unerwartete Wertigkeit erschafft. Versteht man
eine angekündigte Idee in genau diesem Sinne nicht, wird sie auch nicht als Idee attribuiert
mit einem begeisterten: „Großartig! Super Idee!“ Im Ideenzeitalter geht es also nicht nur
darum, Ideen zu entwickeln, sondern auch darum, Ideen als Ideen identifizierbar zu ma-
chen. Jederzeit, in jedem Entwicklungsschritt, als Vorhaben, in der Entwicklung und wenn
216 S. Fischer
sie fertig sind. Denn Ideen wollen in ihrer Bedeutung als Idee sofort verstanden werden.
Das ist eines der wesentlichen Erfolgskriterien jeder Idee.
Was ist also mit all den Ideen, die – ob im Kopf oder bereits auf der Straße – begeistert
mitgeteilt, aber doch nicht als Idee verstanden werden? Das Unverständnis oder die Be-
weggründe zum Nichtverständnis können ganz unterschiedlicher Natur sein, sowohl bei
dem, der sie hat, als auch bei denen, die sie verstehen sollen:
• Die Idee bleibt in der Lösung verborgen:
Man ist so tief in die eigene Idee versunken, dass man glaubt, mit der Lösung bereits
die Bedeutung der Idee kommuniziert zu haben. Wenn man aber nicht weiß, was zu
welchem Zweck gelöst wurde, kann man auch das Wesen dieser Idee nicht verstehen.
• Ideen werden nicht zielgruppenspezifisch kommuniziert:
Mathematikern, die an der gleichen Aufgabe arbeiten, reicht untereinander bei der Voll-
endung einer Idee wahrscheinlich die Kommunikation einer Formel. Allen anderen, die
diesen Wissenskonsens nicht teilen, muss die Idee der Idee so übersetzt werden, dass
ihre Bedeutung von allen Interessierten verstanden wird, dass also alle die Idee der Idee
verstehen.
• Die Gewohnheit beherrscht unser Denken:
Wir nehmen Dinge vorzugsweise in ihrer vertrauten Funktion wahr und verhindern so
gerade beim Problemlösen das Entstehen von Ideen. Ein etwas einfaches Beispiel ver-
deutlicht, was uns täglich auf der Suche nach Ideen widerfährt: Neun Punkte, die quadra-
tisch angeordnet sind, lassen sich nicht mit vier geraden Linien verbinden (ohne den Stift
abzusetzen), wenn man nicht über das sichtbare Quadrat hinausdenken kann. Entschei-
dend bei dem Versuch, „Out-of-the-Box“ zu denken, ist es zu wissen, was die Box ist.
• Man kann die Bedeutung einer Idee nicht messen:
Es ist wie beim Filmproduzenten Harry Warner, der um 1925 herum die Idee einer Ton-
spur im Film mit dem Urteil vernichtete: „Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? The
music – that’s the big plus about this.“ (Warner und Jennings 1965, S. 167–168) Man
lässt Ideen gedanklich nicht zu, wenn einerseits eine funktionierende Idee bereits da
ist – die Musik – und andererseits bezüglich einer neuen Idee das Zusammenspiel von
Anlass, Lösung und Wert nicht so schlüssig ist, dass man den Mut hat, sich auf das
Neue einzulassen.
• Selbst die überzeugendste Idee kann sich als flüchtiges Gut entpuppen:
Man versteht seine eigene Idee nicht mehr, weil sie wie ein Wackelkontakt aufflackert,
den Eindruck vermittelt, strahlend klar zu sein, und dennoch nicht wirklich greifbar ist.
Beispielhaft ist Billy Wilders Anekdote, wie er im Halbschlaf wunderbare Bilder im
Kopf hatte, die sich zu einer großen Filmidee zusammenfügten und sie, tapfer gegen
den wohlig aufkommenden Schlaf kämpfend, mit ein paar Stichworten niederschrieb.
Der Moment dann, als er erwacht und voller Vorfreude auf das Blatt Papier schaut, ließ
ihn in sich zusammen sinken im Angesicht dessen, was er als Idee niederschrieb: „Boy
meets girl.“ Eine nächtliche Idee zu notieren, heißt nicht, am nächsten Tag noch zu
wissen, worum es geht (Fischer 2017).
Die Idee von Idee 217
Zwei Sichtweisen von unterschiedlichen Seiten des Tisches sollen den Gedanken wei-
ter verdeutlichen. Die Sicht der potenziellen Investoren und die der Ideenentwickler, der
Innovatoren:
Im Kopf des Investors
• Es scheint kein Problem zu sein, Ideen zu generieren. Wir brauchen aber nicht unzäh-
lige Ideen, wir brauchen eine brillante!
• Wir wollen nicht an eine Idee glauben, deren Bedeutung sich uns nicht sofort erschließt.
Wir wollen auf Anhieb sicher sein, dass die Idee gut ist.
• Eine Idee ist kein Versprechen einer Idee. Es muss eine Idee sein!
Im Kopf des Innovators
• Wir präsentieren unseren Investoren oder Kunden nur Ideen, von denen wir überzeugt
sind. Wie kann es dann sein, dass die Kunden es nicht sind?
• Wir können Ideen für Präsentationen nicht bereits realisiert haben – eine Idee ist eben
nur eine Idee. Man muss uns schon vertrauen, dass sie gut ist.
• Vor acht Jahren haben wir eine unserer besten Ideen realisiert. Warum ist sie heute nicht
mehr so erfolgreich, obwohl wir immer wieder Dinge verändert und angepasst haben?
Was heißt das? Hunderttausende von Ideenversprechen finden sich auch oder beson-
ders in Unternehmen und werden doch nicht als Idee erkannt: Abstracts von Business-
plänen oder Präsentationen erschließen sich oft erst nach intensivem Studium oder
Nachfrage oder gar nicht – ein Fallstrick der Start-up-Ökonomie. Professionalisierte
Ideensammlungen auf Online-Plattformen leiden am gleichen Phänomen der mangeln-
den Verständlichkeit – verpuffte Energie. Ergebnisse von Ideenworkshops rufen am
nächsten Tag die Frage hervor: „Was haben wir eigentlich damit gemeint?“ – Ideen wer-
den wegen Unverständlichkeit verworfen. Labs, in denen intensiv und ausgiebig an Ideen
gearbeitet wird, verlieren die Ideen bei der Übergabe an das Unternehmen – es ist keiner
da, der sich das Verständnis der Idee so angeeignet hat, wie jene, die sie entwickelt haben.
Anders gesagt: Vor der Beurteilung einer Idee auf ökonomische Tauglichkeit steht ihre
Identifikation als Idee [sic!] – ein Aspekt, der in Wissenschaft und Praxis bislang außen
vorbleibt.
Doch Ideen sind immer potenzielle Werte. Ideen zu verwerfen, die schlecht sind, ist
gut. Ideen zu verwerfen, weil man sie nicht versteht, ist schlecht (Fischer 2017). Nicht jede
verstandene Idee ist per se eine erfolgversprechende Idee. Aber jede nicht verstandene
Idee stellt ein möglicherweise verlorenes Potenzial dar – für den Einzelnen eine Enttäu-
schung, kann es für Unternehmen ökonomisch desaströs sein.
Malcolm Gladwell, Autor des US-amerikanischen Magazins „The New Yorker“ und
Publizist, hat in einem Interview im „Zeit“-Magazin vom 28.05.2009 die wesentliche
Frage gestellt: „Man muss eine Idee elegant und effizient vorstellen und auswerten. Ich
frage mich immer: Was ist die minimale Menge an Information, die ich mitteilen muss, um
noch den Kern einer starken Idee zu vermitteln?“ (Gladwell 2002).
218 S. Fischer
Dahinter verbirgt sich die Frage, welche Entitäten Idee ausmachen und ob sie sich so
systematisieren lassen, dass das Verständnis und die Qualität von Idee und ihren inhaltli-
chen Ausprägungen als explizitem Konstrukt hergestellt und gesichert werden können.
Die Frage soll mit der Betrachtung und Analyse von Ursachen beantwortet werden:
Entstanden ist die Ideenökonomie mit dem D’Artagnan-Prinzip als ontologischem Ideen-
schlüssel zur Qualitätssicherung von Ideen. Es ist eine Weiterentwicklung der Forschung
der Autorin zur Dissertation „Die zeitgenössische Verwendung des Begriffs Idee, die
sprachliche Gestaltung von Ideen und ihr semantisches Optimierungspotenzial“ an der
Europauniversität Viadrina 2012 (Fischer 2012).
3 Anforderungen: Ideen müssen alles können
Die Forschung ergab u. a. eine ungeheure Dehnbarkeit der Definitions- und Anwendungs-
breite des Begriffs Idee. Diese Anforderungen hat das D’Artagnan-Prinzip berücksichtigt
und allen Bedeutungen Rechnung getragen:
• Idee muss der Offenheit ihrer vielfältigen Bedeutungen Rechnung tragen: Sie ist Ziel,
wenn sie Probleme lösen soll; sie ist Hoffnungsträger, wenn sie als Lösung erkannt
wird; sie ist bemerkenswert, wenn sie – bereits realisiert – entdeckt wird. Idee ist ein
bedeutendes Versprechen, Idee ist ein noch gedankenloses Vorhaben, Idee ist ein Geis-
tesblitz, Idee ist das Ergebnis einer monatelangen Arbeit oder eine anerkannte Güte wie
die Idee des Binärcodes oder der Elektrizität.
• Ideen müssen der rhetorischen Anwendungsvielfalt Rechnung tragen: Sie sind, so der
Blick in beliebige lexikalische Definitionen, „schöpferischer Gedanke“, „Vorstellung“,
„Einfall“, „Absicht“, „Plan“, „Innovation“, „Erfindung“, „Ahnung“, „Vision“, „Lö-
sung“, „Urform“ etc. (Deutscher Wortschatz o. J.)
• Die Verfassung einer Idee ist in allen Phasen ihres Entwicklungsprozesses wandelbar:
Eine Idee ist, was temporär vom Eigner als Idee verstanden wird: erste vage Idee, blöde
Idee, geprüfte Idee oder erfolgreich umgesetzte Idee etc.
• Unser intuitives Prüfsiegel für Ideen ist das Kriterium einer originellen, unverhofften
Lösung eines akzeptierten Problems, die Läuterung, Erleichterung und eine Wertigkeit
erschafft: ob als Ergebnis eines leutseligen Abends („Was hatten wir wieder für irre
Ideen!“), als Geschäftsmodell („Super Idee, daraus machen wir ein Geschäft!“) oder
gar als „größte Idee der Menschheit“ (die Erfindung des Rades).
• Ideen haben den Anspruch, in kürzester Zeit auch als Idee verstanden zu werden: Die
erste Erwartungshaltung an eine angekündigte Idee ist es, sie ad hoc als Idee zu begrei-
fen – und sich ihr Verständnis nicht kognitiv zu erarbeiten.
• Ideen für ein breites Publikum brauchen den Wissenskonsens des breiten Publikums:
Beispiele gelungener Vorträge auf Ideenkonferenzen wie TED Conference oder the
99U Conference machen es deutlich. Das Wesen einer Idee vermitteln zu können, heißt,
die Ebene des Konkreten, Deskriptiven zu verlassen und durch allgemeinverständliche
Übersetzungen die Idee der Idee zu transportieren.
Die Idee von Idee
Allen Anforderungen werden erfolgreich vermittelte Ideen, Ideen die wir nicht in Frage
stellen, scheinbar automatisch gerecht. Sie bilden die Ausgangslage der Ideenökonomie
und ihres grundlegenden D’Artagnan-Prinzips.
4 Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip: Die Idee von Verdichtung
und Klarheit
Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip1 befördert keine Entzauberung von Ideen. Die großen und klei-
nen umwerfenden, begeisternden Ideen werden immer verzaubern. Doch bevor sie Ideen
sind, muss man sich ihrer Verständlichkeit widmen, die schnell wie eine gute Pointe das
Gegenüber treffen muss. Das Wesen einer Idee ist es, Idee [sic!] zu sein (Fischer 2017).
Die Verständlichkeit einer Idee, deren Bedeutung im Kern Originalität und Neuheit sind,
kann als verdichtete Einheit von Anlass, Lösung und Wert hergestellt werden. Die Idee wird
als Idee sichtbar. Es ist ein auf dem kleinstmöglichem Algorithmus beruhendes System der
Sinneinheiten von Idee, das das Verständnis von ihr als explizites Konstrukt herstellt und es
semantisch wie logisch sichert, sodass es als Prinzip verstanden und eingesetzt werden kann.
Die Sinneinheiten sind dabei untereinander nicht ersetzbar (Wert ist nicht Lösung, Anlass ist
nicht Wert etc.), sie sind in ihrem Zusammenspiel die Erfüllungsmomente der Idee, die im
Mittelpunkt stehend das Wesen ihrer selbst in seiner Anwendungsvielfalt abbildet.
Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip stellt als Kausalprinzip (ist – ist nicht) gleichzeitig die Grund-
lage zur methodischen Qualitätsentwicklung und -sicherung dar. Voraussetzung zur quali-
tativen Ideenentwicklung ist ein hohes Maß an kognitiver Arbeit und Abstraktionsfähig-
keit, also der Fähigkeit zu verallgemeinernder Sinnbildung (Denken und sprachliches
Erfassen ausgehend von einzelnen Informationsteilen hin zur Feststellung und Benennung
von gemeinsamen, wesentlichen Eigenschaften und deren Bedeutung).
Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip
• Anlass: Die Wiege der Notwendigkeit
Ideen haben immer einen Anlass: Man stößt auf ein ungelöstes Problem oder sieht eine
unbewältigte Herausforderung. Ohne das Problem oder die Herausforderung zu kennen
und zu verstehen, wird eine Lösung schwer auffindbar – und schwer verständlich.
Wenn also niemand weiß oder versteht, was die Idee veranlasst hat, ist sie nutzlos.
Dann ist die Lösung keine Idee. Sie ist nur das Ende einer Geschichte ohne Geschichte.
• Lösung: Gesteuert von Notwendigkeit und Enthusiasmus
Die Lösung ist das der Idee eigene unerwartete Neue. Das, was wir als „Idee“ verste-
hen. Die Lösung ist die Antwort auf das Problem oder die Herausforderung. Sie ist der
1
Die Bezeichnung D’Artagnan-Prinzip ist dem Roman „Les trois mousquétaires“ von Alexandre
Dumas dem Älteren entlehnt. So wie die Wesenszüge der „Drei Musketiere“ Arthos, Aramis und
Porthos Projektionsflächen für d’Artagnan sind (der als Vierter die drei erst zu den „drei Musketie-
ren“ machte), so sind Problem, Lösung und Wert die expliziten Projektionsflächen der Idee.
219 220 S. Fischer
besondere, neue, einzigartige Einfall zur Lösung. Die Lösung ist das, was wir lieben,
wenn wir eine Idee haben. Sie bringt das Strahlen in die Augen unserer Zuhörer, weil
sie etwas besser macht.
• Wert: Die Qualität und ihre Sicherung
Der Wert verdeutlicht die besondere Bedeutung der Lösung oder Herausforderung und
zeigt sich darin, dass die Anforderungen erfüllt werden, die sich durch den Anlass ge-
bildet haben. Der Wert löst Sinn und Bedeutung der Idee ein – er macht die Lösung
anschaulich. Wenn wir den Wert unserer Idee beschreiben können, dann wissen wir
sehr gut, warum sie bedeutend ist, warum sie wertvoll ist. Der Wert verleiht der Idee
Unbestreitbarkeit – sichert also ihre Qualität.
Das D’Artagnan-Prinzip ist die Bausubstanz aller Ideen (Abb. 1). Die Anwendung
ermöglicht eine Qualitätssicherung von Ideen für ihren gesamten Entstehungs- und
Daseinsprozess. Anlass, Lösung und Wert als inhaltliche Einheit zu formulieren,
heißt also, eine Idee verständlich und nachvollziehbar kommunizieren zu können.
Als Kausalprinzip ist die Bedingtheit der Sinneinheiten von Idee untereinander be-
reits vor der inhaltlich erdachten Idee sichtbar. Das Prinzip ist vom Ideenfindungs-
prozess über die Qualitätssicherung zur Formulierung einer verständlichen Idee bis
zu ihrer Sicherung im Umsetzungsprozess und zur Bewertung bestehender Ideen me-
thodisch nutzbar.
Ein einfaches Beispiel dient zur Veranschaulichung: Sie werden beim Lesen dieses
Textes unaufmerksam, lassen sich ablenken und können den Ausführungen nicht weiter
folgen. Wenn Sie herausfinden, warum die Situation ist, wie sie ist, können Sie auch die
beste Idee zur Verbesserung der Situation finden.
Abb. 1 D’Artagnan-Prinzip –
Das Ziel einer Idee ist es, Idee
[sic!] zu sein
Die Idee von Idee 221 222 S. Fischer

Sie fragen sich zuerst, was Sie eigentlich für ein Problem haben. Je nach Problem (1–3) Mobilität nicht mehr ausgehend vom Vehikel zu denken (weil es die einzige flexible Kom-
finden Sie dann Lösungen, die jeweils unterschiedliche Bedeutungen haben (Abb. 2). ponente in einem sonst eher gleichbleibenden Umfeld ist), sondern ausgehend von unse-
Das sehr einfache Beispiel veranschaulicht die Logik, die sich hinter den drei Ideen ren vielfältigen, flexiblen Anforderungen an Mobilität und den Rahmenbedingungen der
gleichermaßen verbirgt. Diese Logik steckt in jeder denkbaren Idee, sei sie noch so kom- Mobilität, die wir täglich mit neuen Ideen verändern. Damit wird das Unternehmen als
plex. Diese Logik produziert keine Einfälle – die Logik einer Idee ist ihre Qualitätssiche- Organisation selbst zu einem Systemveränderer in Wirtschaft, Politik, Gesellschaft
rung. Erst wenn die drei Entitäten inhaltlich vollkommen miteinander verzahnt sind, sie oder Kultur.
sich also logisch bedingen (Abb. 3), ist die Idee – für diesen Moment – stimmig. Ohne die strategischen Vorgehensweisen im Detail zu kennen, ist sicher, dass dieses
Ein Unternehmen wie Local Motors aus den USA beispielsweise vereint viele bahn- Unternehmen die Logik seiner Ideen für sich und im Einklang miteinander fortlaufend
brechende Ideen in seinem Unternehmenszweck – autonomes Fahren, Produktion in 3D prüft, um aus den Erkenntnissen Schlüsse über die Potenziale ziehen zu können. Nicht
Druck, kollaboratives Arbeiten und Open-Source-Entwicklungen und nicht zuletzt dezen- anders machen es die großen Spieler auf dem Marktplatz der Ideen. Sie suchen, finden und
tralisierte, mobile Arbeitseinheiten – die alle gleichzeitig unterschiedliche Fragen beant- analysieren das Weltgeschehen auf Probleme und Herausforderungen; sie entwickeln
worten oder Probleme lösen. Es sind in sich bereits hochkomplexe Ideen in der Entwick- Ideen als Antworten und sichern sie fortlaufend in ihrer dynamischen Entwicklung durch
lung, die zusammen ein Unternehmen ergeben, das einer noch größeren Idee folgt: die das Beobachten der sich permanent verändernden Problemlagen; sie nehmen also fortlau-
fend Anpassungen der Ideen an jene Herausforderungen vor, deren Antwort sie sind; sie
eruieren die spezifischen Werte ihrer Ideen im Zusammenspiel von Anlass und Lösung so,
Problem: Lösung: Wert:
1 dass die Logik der Verzahnung stets durch Veränderung erhalten bleibt; sie reflektieren
Physische Müdigkeit? Kaffee! Aufmerksamkeit
darüber hinaus das Zusammenspiel aller Ideen – der eigenen, aber mit Sicherheit auch
Problem: Lösung: Wert: jener, die sich andernorts und in anderen Branchen entwickeln – fortlaufend und sie lassen
2
Materie bekannt? Nächster Artikel! Zeitgewinn zwei wesentliche Dinge in der Ideenentwicklung zu: Unsicherheit und Scheitern.
Nicht unwesentlich bei alldem ist auch, dass sie eine klare Unterscheidung zwischen
Problem: Lösung: Wert: Erfahrung und Gewohnheit zu treffen scheinen und zudem beides ausschalten können, um
3
Verständnis? Autorin fragen! Wissensgewinn
das Neue Einzug in ihre Köpfe halten zu lassen.
Problem: Lösung: Wert:
Die Deklination einer Idee kann also in ihrer Konsequenz nicht singulär betrachtet
4 werden: Eine Idee ist immer Teil eines Systems. Jede Idee ist Teil der nächstgrößeren Idee,
... ... ...
der nächstgrößeren Idee, der nächst größeren Idee etc. (Abb. 4). Die Idee ist ein Fraktal –
Abb. 2 D’Artagnan-Prinzip in Anwendung das zu erkennen und die Bedeutung dessen zu verstehen, heißt, eine der größten Chancen
zur Entwicklung der nächstbesseren Idee vor Augen zu haben.

Abb. 3 Die Bedingtheit des

D’Artagnan-Prinzips
5 Kreativität und Kausalität

Zurück zum Ideenverständnis und ihrer systemimmanenten Logik. Das D’Artagnan-

Prinzip ermöglicht die Erarbeitung eines stabilen, kausalen Ideen-Systems, in dem sich
die Kreativität frei entfalten kann. Die Unterscheidung zwischen stabilen und instabilen
Ideensystemen verdeutlicht die Fragilität einer Idee und die potenziell missverständlichen
Wirkungsweisen.

Stabile Ideensysteme
Die Stabilität ist leicht auszumachen: Entweder sind alle drei Entitäten – inhaltlich logisch
miteinander verzahnt – vorhanden, oder nicht. Ich habe eine Idee oder ich bin in einem
Kontinuitätszustand, der eine Idee nicht notwendig erscheinen lässt. Im Umfeld einer dy-
namischen Marktbewegung ist es allerdings unerlässlich, insbesondere die Frage nach
dem Anlass fortlaufend zu prüfen(Abb. 5).
Die Idee von Idee 223 224 S. Fischer

• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Idee

• Die verständliche, diskutierbare und umsetzbare Idee ist eine logische Einheit von An-
lass, Lösung und Wert.
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Kontinuität
Die Bedürfnislage scheint befriedigt, der Zustand ist durchgehend optimal (ggf. sieht
man aber auch die Probleme oder Herausforderungen nicht).

Instabile Ideensysteme
Wie aber wirkt eine Idee, wenn eine oder mehrere Sinneinheiten fehlen (Abb. 6)? In jedem
Fall führt es, wenn nicht ein Höchstmaß an Wissenskonsens zwischen den Kommunizie-
renden geteilt wird, zur Demontage der Nachvollziehbarkeit einer Idee.
Die instabilen Ideensysteme treten sowohl in aktiven Ideenfindungsphasen auf als auch
in sogenannten passiven Ideenfindungs- oder Innovationsphasen. In aktiven Ideenfin-
dungsphasen lässt sich die Kausalität einer Idee methodisch über das D’Artagnan-Prinzip
prüfen, um festzustellen, welche der Entitäten fehlt oder unzureichend ausgeführt ist.
Passive Ideenfindungs- oder Innovationsphasen sollen hier verstanden werden als un-
bewusst auftretende Erneuerungsbemühungen. Allein die aktive Kommunikation einer
oder zweier Entitäten kann ein bedeutender Hinweis auf ein Erneuerungsbemühen sein.
Der Feststellung von auftretenden Problemen folgt in der Konsequenz eine Lösungssu-
che – die auf die Frage geprüft werden kann, ob die Lösung einzigartig, neu oder originell
sein sollte: Eine Idee wird gesucht. Werte, die als Soll-Zustand kommuniziert werden,
können ähnlich systematisch geprüft werden. Ebenso Lösungen, egal ob sie einer sponta-

Abb. 4 Die Fraktalität von Idee. Adaption des Sierpinski-Dreiecks nach Wacław Sierpiński.
(Quelle: Mandelbrot 1987, S. 152)

Abb. 5 Stabilitäten im Ideensystem

Abb. 6 Instabilitäten im Ideensystem

Die Idee von Idee 225
nen Eingebung folgend oder nach langer Verweildauer im Schreibtisch oder Kopf mitge-
teilt werden.
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Potenzialerkennung
Das Erkennen eines Problems oder einer Herausforderung impliziert die Sicht auf
„Besseres“, auch wenn es noch keine Lösung gibt. Der erreichbare Wert kann bereits
definiert werden.
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Diskontinuität
Ein Problem oder eine Herausforderung hat sich im kontinuierlichen Zustand heraus-
gebildet und nötigen zum „rettenden“ Handeln.
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Alltäglicher Wahnsinn
Eine Art „grundloser“ Geistesblitz, der weder einen besonderen Anlass hat noch einen
Wert darstellt. Meist eher als „spaßige Idee“ ohne kausalen Zusammenhang zu verste-
hen. (Im Gegensatz zu einem Geistesblitz, dem nachfolgend ein Anlass und Wert zu-
geordnet werden kann.)
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Strategische Frage
Die Lösung ist hier als ein Ansatz zum gegebenen Problem oder zur Herausforderung
zu verstehen, die strategisch auf ihre Werthaftigkeit und damit auf ihre Güte geprüft
werden muss.
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Autorität
Die Formulierung einer Lösung und ihres adäquaten Wertes ohne Bekanntgabe oder
Kenntnis des Anlasses, also des Grundes für die geplante Handlung, impliziert die Er-
wartung an „blinde Gefolgschaft“, nicht Erkenntnis.
• Anlass | Lösung | Wert = Weltverbesserung
Der Treiber ist ein Idealist, der zum Ideologen werden kann, wenn seine Wertevorstel-
lung weder einen Anlass noch eine Lösung braucht, sondern einzig als Appell ge-
nutzt wird.
6 Fazit
Eine Idee ist eine originelle, neue Lösung für ein Problem oder eine Herausforderung –
mit einem unschlagbaren Wert. Die Währung der Qualität einer Idee bemisst sich in ihrer
eindeutigen Logik und der Explizierbarkeit von Anlass, Lösung und Wert.
Denn: Das Wesen einer Idee ist es, Idee [sic!] zu sein (Fischer 2017). Das schafft sie
nur, wenn sie verstanden wird. Verständnis herzustellen, beginnt mit der Entwicklung der
Idee als Kausalprinzip und endet bestenfalls nie, solange die Idee als solche der Welt er-
halten bleibt. Das eigene und fremde Verständnis von Idee kann erzeugt werden, indem die
Idee in ihrem ganzen schlüssigen Wesen erfasst wird. Jede Idee ist auch die Idee der Idee
(Fischer 2017). Ergebnis: Ideen kommen in die Welt und werden erfolgreich etabliert und
geführt!
226 S. Fischer
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Prof. Dr. Sabine Fischer ist Professorin für Ideenökonomie. Entwicklungsprozesse und Qualitäts-
sicherung von Innovationen in der digitalen Transformation sind ihr Thema. Sie lehrt und lernt als
Professorin an Universitäten/Hochschulen im deutschsprachigen Raum in Berlin, Zürich, Basel,
Bern und an internationalen Universitäten wie der Lomonosov University in Moskau oder der Uni-
versidad San Pablo in Guatemala. Als Wissenschaftsbeirätin begleitet sie die Wirtschaftskommuni-
kation der Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin und die Hochschule Macromedia in Mün-
chen. Sie ist als Expertin auch Sparringspartnerin der Bundesfachkommission „Künstliche
Intelligenz und Wertschöpfung 4.0“ des Wirtschaftsrates der Bundesregierung, Mitglied des Daten-
schutzbeirates der Deutschen Bahn und bereichert ihr Wissen zudem als Mitglied des Advisory
Boards der Purpose Stiftung und der KI-Unternehmensberatung Birds on Mars.
 Veränderung über Jahrtausende erzählt. Die Ideengeschichte
beschreibt das Aufkommen von Neuem, von Ideen, die verändern,
bruchstuecke.info
von der ächzenden Langsamkeit, mit der dies vonstatten geht. Sie
beschreibt die Auslöser, die Notwendigkeiten, die sichtbaren und
Warum stehen Lehrende wie unsichtbaren Anlässe, die, hat man sie als Gefahr oder
Sendemasten vor den Lernenden? – Herausforderung erkannt, die Energie für Neues, für Veränderung
bruchstücke liefern. Und sie beschreibt in ihrer Eigenschaft als
Geschichtsschreibung die Bedeutung, die das Neue, als es älter
Sabine Fischer wurde, erlangte und wie es die Welt veränderte.
17-20 minutes
Was die Ideengeschichte selten beschreibt, sind die Gründe für
unsere Verweigerung des Neuen, für unser Aufbegehren gegen
das Neue, wenn es spürbar wird und das Gewohnte aufzulösen
droht, für den Rückzug auf gefühlte oder gewünschte Wahrheiten
wie „Wir sind auch ohne das groß geworden“, „Das brauchen wir
nicht. Vertrauen Sie auf meine Erfahrung“ oder „Das hat zu viele
Nachteile.“ Die Ideengeschichte beschreibt nicht das Verharren im
Alten gegen langsam aufkommendes besseres Wissen, sie
verschweigt den Energieverlust, den uns das kostet.

Distance Learning 2020 ist Bildung im Ausnahmezustand, weil wir

uns der Grundfesten des real Räumlichen entledigen mussten und
dieser Umstand Kohorten von zementiert geglaubten
Dominosteinen ins Wanken bringt. Eine Instabilität, die wir beim
besten Willen nicht ignorieren können. Das alles wirft viele Fragen
auch in puncto Bildung auf, von denen ich einige, basierend auf
Die Hörsäle von heute, ‘Lost Places’ von morgen? einem Mix neuer, blutjunger und jahrzehntelang gereifter Erfahrung,
Hier der Hörsaal von gestern des Instituts für Anatomie der FU beantworten und zur Diskussion stellen möchte.
Berlin in Dahlem
Foto: Fabian Arlt 1. Warum ist „Bildung im Ausnahmezustand“?
Weil Bildung seit Februar 2020 unversehens im Ausnahmezustand
stattfindet, ist sie selbst in einen Ausnahmezustand geraten.
Musste das so kommen? Nein. Es ist so gekommen, weil eine sehr
alte Erfahrung besagt, dass das Lernen am besten so funktioniert,
wie wir es seit langem erproben, kennen und gewohnt sind. Als wir
dann mit der Digitalisierung das Schwungrad der
Weltveränderungen angeworfen haben, ließen wir das Lernen
weitgehend außen vor, weil es ja bereits gut funktionierte und es
ökonomisch uninteressant schien.

Jetzt belehren wir uns unter Druck eines Besseren: Wir verändern
die Bildung – und damit uns alle – durch die
Kontaktbeschränkungen und erfahren, dass etwas funktioniert. Was
wäre, wenn wir den Umstand zum Anlass nehmen und mit der Idee Bild: Michael Seibt auf Pixabay

von Bildung neu anfangen? Distance Learning, Online-Lernen, MOOCs, Telelernen,

Wenn ich einen langen, intensiven Blick in die Geschichte der multimediales Lernen, computergestütztes Lernen, ComputerBased

Menschheit werfe, dann ist es die Ideengeschichte, die von Training, Computer-Supported-Collaborative-Learning, etc. gibt es

unserem Fortkommen, unserer Entwicklung unserer geistigen schon einige Jahre. Und es spricht vieles für deren Bedeutsamkeit:
Zeit, Inhalt, Zusammenarbeit könnten dynamischer und
unabhängiger von Rahmenbedingungen gestaltet werden,
traditionelle Strukturen können an neuen Kriterien entlang
verändert oder vollkommen erneuert werden, reisebedingte
Umweltverschmutzung kann minimiert, Lern- und Freizeiten erhöht,
Kosten gesenkt werden u.v.m.
Das digitale Lernen hat sich aber in der Regel noch an keiner
Schule oder Hochschule neben dem Direktunterricht etabliert, der
nach wie vor in tradiertem Gewand von Frontalunterricht, einer
gewohnten Separierung von Unterrichtsfächern, der Routine
geschuldeten Lehrplänen und Anpassungen an den Kanon der
Allgemeinbildung daherkommt. Mit dem sogenannten Corona
Lockdown wurden nun vor einigen Wochen die analogen Türen
geschlossen und die digitalen mussten gezwungenermassen
geöffnet werden, um dem Bildungsauftrag nachzukommen.
Seitdem ist die Bildung im Ausnahmezustand, denn die Regeln
funktionieren nicht mehr so wie vorher, die Gewohnheiten schlagen
Kapriolen und die bislang unangetastet gefühlte Wahrheit vom
Lernen zerbröselt uns zwischen den Fingern.
Der Ausnahmezustand präsentiert sich aus meiner Sicht von einer
überraschend zukunftsgewandten Seite. Herausforderungen
werden angenommen, Probleme gelöst, Chancen erkannt und
Tatkraft ist vorhanden, die Krise zu meistern. Das reicht aber nicht
für unsere Zukunft. Neue Ideen, die die Kraft haben, Lernen und
Bildung auf den Kopf zu stellen, neue Praktiken, die die
eigentlichen Anforderungen berücksichtigen, denen sich die
Bildung stellen muss, sind das Gebot. War unser Bildungssystem
lange dem ruhigen Wandel der Industrialisierung geschuldet, so
haben sich doch diese Umstände bereits vor einiger Zeit
maßgeblich und unwiederbringlich geändert. Wir wandeln unsere
Welt in allen Facetten so schnell, dass es spätestens jetzt, im
Distance Learning, klar sein müsste, dass auch Bildung diesen
umfassenden Wandel schnellstmöglich benötigt. Bildung kann nicht
mehr mit dem Erwachsenenalter aufhören. Sie muss lebenslang
stattfinden. Und sie muss sich, wie ihre Protagonisten, einem
Chamäleon in einer Lightshow gleich, permanent entwickeln und
erneuern – um nur zwei wesentliche Aspekte zu nennen.
2. Warum klappt es seit März 2020 mit Distance
Learning?
Die ächzende Langsamkeit, mit der das Neue Einzug hält,
begründet sich entgegen jeder Selbsteinschätzung – insbesondere
in Zeiten der Digitalisierung – in einer tiefsitzenden Furcht vor dem
Neuen. Neues ist das Gegenteil vom Gewohnten, von der
Erfahrung, vom Bekannten, vom Verlässlichen, vom Wissen. Es ist
nicht anders, es ist neu. Das Neue ist also immer auch unsicher.
Sicherheit aber ist eine der existentiellen Anforderungen, die wir an
all unsere menschlichen Bedürfnisse stellen.
Schule und Bildung gaben uns immer eine solche Sicherheit –
sonst hätten wir sie gemessen an den Anforderungen längst
umfassender geändert und tatsächlich erneuert. Diese Sicherheit
ist für uns, wie der Hirnforscher Gerhard Roth feststellt, eine
Gewohnheit, die „… sowohl stoffwechselbiologisch als auch
neuronal billig“ ist. Es wird also keine Energie zur Veränderung
aufgewendet, selbst trotz besseren Wissens nicht – wenn nicht die
Sicherheit plötzlich zu nahezu lebensbedrohlicher Unsicherheit
wird. Dafür hat COVID-19 nun gesorgt. Die gewohnten Orte der
Bildung mutierten zu Gefahrenzonen. Lösung: Wir verändern die
Einstellung gegenüber dem ehedem Unsicheren,
Angstmachenden, Ungewohnten, wie Distance Learning, Online-
Lernen etc., weil in diesen Formaten jetzt plötzlich das Wohl liegt,
was vorher Wehe war und nur am Rande der Bildung in
Erscheinung trat.
Was ist daraus zu lernen?
– Wir sollten weiterhin Neues erfinden, es aber nicht mehr alt
denken.
– Eine überlegte Analyse der eigenen Ängste kann Potentiale
freisetzen.
– Gewohnheiten sind der weltweit größte Fundus an Ideen.
3. Warum klappt es doch nicht mit Distance
Learning?

Das unauffällige Zurücktreten hinter eine der Tradition

verpflichteten Institution ist ein Schlag ins Gesicht der Zukunft,
weswegen jede Idee und Tat der Krise zum Bildungswohl allerbeste
Chancen hat, gesehen zu werden und sich durchzusetzen.

Was ist daraus zu lernen?

– Gewohnheit ist der Tod der Erkenntnis.

Bild: Gerd Altmann auf Pixabay
– Die Bedürfnislage spricht für die Akzeptanz neuer Ideen.
Ich möchte den Faden der zweiten Frage aufnehmen und die
– Nutzen wir unsere Chance.
gefühlte Majorität von 98 Prozent beleuchten, die den wagemutigen
ersten Schritt gegangen sind und Distance Learning oder Online-
Lernen vollziehen, um dann aber das gewohnte Denken wie gehabt
ins neue Gewand des Digitalen zu kleiden.
Ich kann mich sehr gut an die frühen Jahre des world wide web
erinnern. Ich leitete Deutschlands erstes genuines Onlinemagazin
www.wildpark.com und nahezu täglich wurden neue technische
Features gefunden und erprobt, wir entwickelten
Soundnavigationen, animierte Chaträume, 3-D-Logos und erfanden
das Potential des Hyperlinks jede Woche neu. Aus heutiger Sicht
ebenso eigenartig wie interessant aber war, dass wir Monate
brauchten, um zu verstehen, dass es keinen geregelten
Redaktionsschluss mehr geben musste.
Interessant an der Bildung ist, dass ungeachtet der ungeheuer
vielen Herausforderungen, Möglichkeiten, Veränderungen und
Neuheiten noch immer kaum etwas von dem in Frage gestellt wird,
was doch immer schon in der Lehre funktioniert hat. Ich arbeite
international an einigen Hochschulen. Meine nicht repräsentative
Befragung von Studierenden und und Dozierenden, ihre
Erfahrungsberichte der letzten Wochen und auch ihre frühere und
heutige Haltung zum Lernen online ergeben ein ziemlich klares Bild
eines schlichten Umzugs des alten Systems in eine neue Welt. Es
ist, als ob wir in der Lage wären, den Mars zu besiedeln und als
erstes 200 Tesla dorthin transportieren, um mobil zu sein.
Was ist daraus zu lernen?
– Veränderung birgt eine ungeheure Chance zur Veränderung.
4. Welchen Widerständen begegnen wir?
Eigentlich ist die Frage obsolet, weil sie unter 2. bereits beantwortet
wurde. Auszuführen wäre hier nur noch, dass Angst und
Unsicherheit immer bei einem selbst, also in meinem Fall bei mir,
auftauchen und beginnen sich breit zu machen, wenn ich sie nicht
per se anerkenne, sie in ihrem Wesen erfasse, analysiere, aus
ihnen lerne und sie dann auch bestenfalls irgendwann eliminiere.
Angst und Unsicherheit lähmen nicht nur. Wenn man ihnen – gerne
befeuert durch den nach Sicherheit suchenden Abgleich mit den
Ängsten anderer – Raum gibt, dann schaffen sie auch eine
individuelle Wirklichkeit, die nahezu selbsterfüllend immer mehr
Raum einnehmen kann. Das Phänomen gibt sich ebenso zu
erkennen in oben zitierten Vertrauen-Sie-mir-Haltungen wie
beispielsweise in aktuell populären Verschwörungsgeschichten.
Was ist daraus zu lernen?
– Denken heisst selber denken.
5. Was können wir umdenken lernen?
Es geht um einen Wechsel der Bildungsparadigmen durch:
• erhöhte Aufmerksamkeit, eigene Denkgewohnheiten zu erkennen
und sie an richtiger Stelle zu eliminieren;
• einen unbändigen Geist, Wissen und Haltung, um die entstandenen
Leerstellen zu füllen;
• ein gutes Verhältnis zum Scheitern und der Fähigkeit, es
gewinnbringend zu reflektieren;
• viel Energie und wachsendes Wissen, um auch dem ungewissen
Neuen eine gewisse Logik abzutrotzen, die ein wenig Sicherheit
und Überzeugung für den nächsten Schritt ausmacht;
• Mut und Bewusstsein, die Veränderungen, das Neue, wirklich zu
wollen, es gestalterisch einzusetzen und auch andere zu
begeistern
• und enorme geistige Anstrengung, um von der industriell geprägten
Denkordnung der Klassifizierung in eine neue Denkordnung zu
übersiedeln, deren erste Idee nicht eine neue Struktur, sondern
systembedingte Relevanz ist.
Was ist daraus zu lernen?
– Veränderung braucht Mut, mit den Veränderungen bei sich selbst
zu beginnen.
– Veränderung braucht Demut oder wie es im Griechischen heißt,
die „Senkung der Ich-Schranke“ im kollektiven
Erneuerungsprozess.
6. Wie kann man, ganz pragmatisch betrachtet,
anfangen die Bildung zu verändern?
Fragen dieser Art machen mir Angst. „Wie gehen Sie vor, Frau
Fischer? Was ist Ihre Lösung? Was sollen wir tun? Wenn Sie
sagen, dass sich etwas ändern muss, dann müssen Sie doch auch
wissen was und wie.“ Diese Fragen begegnen mir in Hochschulen
wie auch Unternehmen oft und die Erfahrung besagt, dass sich
dahinter nicht die Freude auf eine differenzierte Antwort verbirgt,
die Mut macht auf einem langen Weg der Veränderungen hin zum
Neuen, den man nun zusammen gehen kann. Es verbirgt sich
dahinter auch nicht die Klarheit, dass der Weg verzweigt ist,
Entscheidungen gefällt werden müssen, er Gefahren birgt, Risiken
und Scheitern beinhaltet und in Situationen führen kann, aus denen
man sich selber – um Erkenntnisse bereichert – wieder befreien
muss oder die einen auch manchmal ungeahnt weit nach vorne
katapultieren. Das ganz normale Leben eben.
Die Fragen implizieren in der Regel die Anforderung an eine
Lösung, die garantiert funktioniert. „Wenn wir wissen, dass es
klappt, verändern wir uns auch.“ Es werden Fallbeispiele abgefragt,
die den Erfolg beweisen sollen und die den tief im Innersten
versteckten Wunsch nach Wundern als Vernunft deklarieren. Es ist
das ganz persönliche Innovators Dilemma eines und einerr jeden.
Aber zurück zur Frage und wie ich, ganz pragmatisch betrachtet,
angefangen habe, meine Idee von Bildung zu verändern:
Als selbständige Dozentin unterliegen meine Kompetenzen der
Qualitätssicherung meiner Auftraggeber: Nur wenn die Bedeutung
meiner Forschung und meiner Themen als relevant gelten, werde
ich gebucht. Das könnte ein flächendeckendes Konzept werden.
Als nicht-disziplinäre Wissenschaftlerin (gemessen an der
bestehenden Ordnung von Disziplinen) mit dem Querschnittsthema
Ideenökonomie kann ich an allen Fachbereichen lehren und
disziplinübergreifende Erkenntnisse wieder in die jeweiligen
Disziplinen einfließen lassen.
2009 habe ich mein erstes Onlineseminar konzipiert. Ohne
Methodenkanon, ohne Fallbeispiele, ohne Sicherung. Der Mut zum
Machen, Trial and Error, ist über diesen Weg ebenso zu einem Teil
meiner Lehre geworden wie die Formatkritik seitens der
Studierenden, die ich als Routine integriert habe.
In Anbetracht der vielen neuen Möglichkeiten, die wir uns
gegenseitig mit Tools und Methoden bescheren, stelle ich so lange
Fragen, bis ich sie verstehe und validiere dann mit den
Studierenden die Tools im Seminar zum besten Wissen aller.
Ich verschiebe den angestrebten Erkenntnisprozess immer öfter
vom Schöpfungsakt (beispielsweise Projektarbeit) in dessen
Reflexion, damit die Idee vom Kriterium, das der Bewertung
(ökonomisch, gesellschaftlich, wissenschaftlich etc.) zu Grunde
liegt, als wesentlicher Bestandteil der Schöpfung erkannt wird.
Eine Ankündigung der Berliner Ringvorlesungsreihe, hier mit dem
Radiomoderator Robert Skuppin
Mit drei Kollegen von drei Berliner Universitäten (HU, TU, UDK)
veranstalte ich seit zwei Jahren eine öffentliche
Ringvorlesungsreihe zu Denkordnungen aus allen Disziplinen und
ihrem transdisziplinären Potential. Sie wird mit großem Interesse
und Diskussionsbereitschaft (nicht nur) von Studierenden aller
Wissenschaften besucht.
Was können wir tun?
Wir können die heute gegebene Situation als Aufbruch und nicht
als einen Ausnahmezustand verstehen, der zur vergangenen
Normalität zurückführen soll.
Wir können die Stunde als Gunst betrachten in dem Wissen, dass
im Ausnahmezustand Fehler und Misslingen weit weniger Ächtung
finden als Anerkennung fürs Handeln.
Wir können Methoden und Tools spielerisch einsetzen und in der
Zusammenarbeit zwischen Studierenden und Lehrenden neue
Lernformate entwickeln.
Wir können bei der Planung von Online-Seminaren die Chance
ergreifen, alles, wirklich alles was wir in der Lehre vorhaben auf die
Frage zu prüfen: „Trägt das Vorgehen zum Lernen bei?“ – Was
beispielsweise können 90 Minuten Vorlesung leisten?
Wir können darauf vertrauen, dass die Majorität der Studentinnen
und Studenten jedes Engagement von Lehrenden zu schätzen
weiß, weil wir alle in der gleichen Situation stecken.
Was ist daraus zu lernen?
– Das ist ein Anfang.
– Im nächsten Schritt sollten wir alles an der Bildung in Frage
stellen: Warum klassifizieren wir in Mathe, Deutsch und Biologie?
Warum stehen Lehrende wie Sendemasten vor den Lernenden?
Warum haben Lehrräume die immer gleiche Ordnung? Warum
werden Lehrstühle lebenslang besetzt? Warum hört das Lernen
offiziell nach der Ausbildung auf? Warum glauben Jüngere und
Ältere klüger als die jeweils anderen zu sein und verlieren im
Wetteifern wertvolle Energie?
– Danach sollten wir neue Antworten finden.
– Das Neue ist als solches nicht planbar. Das Neue ist neu, weil es
neu ist. Es gibt keine Methode, Technik oder Regel für die
Erschaffung des Neuen. Das Neue, die Schöpfung, braucht
deswegen einzig und allein: Enormen Mut, einen unbändigen Geist
und Logik.
7. Und jetzt?
Nutzen wir die Chance und fragen uns bei allem, was wir täglich
tun, warum wir es tun. Und wie bei jeder guten Sache sind es die
Kriterien, an denen wir das „Warum“ bemessen sollten. Kriterien,
die sich systembedingt täglich verändern können. Die Aufgabe ist
groß. Aber sie ist mit ein wenig Anstrengung zu meistern. Sogar mit
Spaß, wenn man die Chance ergreift, seine Interessen zu seiner
Profession zu machen oder seine Profession mit Interesse zu
meistern.
 Ambi
ENTERPRISE ARTWORKS, THE ARTIST-CONSULTANT, AND CONTEMPORARY
ATTITUDES OF AMBIVALENCE
by
Carson SALTER
SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE ON MAY 10, 2013 IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ART, CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
AT THE
MASSACHUSETTS INSITITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
ABSTRACT
This thesis will discuss selected cases in which artists have undertaken projects directly relating
to a business practice, and the relevant terms for understanding those projects. In the absence
of a physical product (as is often the case with conceptual artwork and knowledge-based
production), we rely on other ways of understanding the producer's work: typically, we look to
distinctions amongst familiar production categories and supposedly strict differences in the
native behaviors of artists or businessmen. Where these hard categories may once have helped
identify the source and intent of work, they seem to hinder apt description in contemporary
practice. I will argue that comprehension of current artistic undertakings requires an ontology of
a middle position-between art and business-and regard for sustained attitudinal ambivalence.
This paper aims to aid the reading of the growing field of artistic undertakings that deal with
business practices, especially focusing on those in which an artist avails knowledge to a non-art
market. To this end, the thesis lays out the methods and poetics of such projects in sections
titled CASES and TERMS. The first chapter provides a background for enterprise artworks, and
overviews the development of the terms Enterprise Culture and the New Spirit. The second
chapter focuses on the artist-consultant (two cases, Artists Placement Group & Ocean Earth)
and unpacks the spatial and embodied nature of the corporate language that they use. The third
chapter surveys contemporary cases of artists working in this field, and describes the ambiguity
and ambivalence with which they operate. These three chapters will progressively bring the
reader, chronologically and topically, to an understanding of current projects in this field, and
(hopefully) pragmatic thinking about their potential. The thesis functions as an analysis of artistic
undertakings as well as positioning statement for the author, as ambi_
Thesis Supervisor: Renee Green
Professor of Art, Culture and Technology
Director, Program in Art, Culture and Technology
3 6
INTRODUCTION
Staking a position outside and opposed to 'the system'is definitely no cinch these days
-especially when the system feeds off segmentation and diversification (if not diversity).
Nor is mounting some purge of all forms of artwork complicity a solution - if only
because not much of interest would be left. What would help, though, is a thorough
transvaluing of critical art discourse and its objects starting with a reassessment and
reproblematising of the current situation and its determinants from a more up-to-date
perspective. This at least would overcome the hypocrisy of basing claims for the
superiority of relational and performative art forms on a static, reified caricature of their
conditions. At the same time, analysis needs to go beyond general social processes,
beyond even such art-world infrastructure as Kunsthallen and galleries and their mixed
economic support, and engage art practice itself, its material, structural and genealogical
specificities, so as to avoid the kind mechanistic account of cultural forms as pre-
destined by causes firmly planted elsewhere. The point is not to reduce art but hopefully
to lay some necessary groundwork for elaborating whatever options it may still have
available.
- Lane Reyleal
There has always been work that fell ambiguously between art and commerce, but the
negotiation is most commonly seen in design discourse (or product / craft trade) where it
centers on the status of an object. In the absence of a physical product (as is often the case
with conceptual artwork and knowledge-based production), we rely on other ways of
understanding the producer's work: typically, we look to distinctions along familiar genre
categories and supposedly strict differences in the native behaviors of artists or businessmen.
Where these hard categories may once have helped identify the source and intent of work, they
seem to hinder apt description in contemporary practice. I will argue that comprehension of
current artistic undertakings requires an ontology of a middle position-between art and
business-and regard for sustained attitudinal ambivalence.
As the following historical examples will show, projects positioned between art and business
realms have rarely been able to sustain positional ambiguity; they tend to fall one way or the
other, to either sell out to the market or fail out for an art audience. Some fall toward their
business interests, lose interest in justifying the union and abandon their art practice altogether.'
Others fall toward their art allegiances, and seize on shallow critique, or finally succumb to the
ILane Reylea, "Your Art World: Or, The Limits of Connectivity," Afterall 14 (2006): 4-5.
2 see Greg Sholis's concept of 'Dark Matter,' the art graduates who disappear from the art industry
simple ease of polemic. Some such falls and failures are intentional demonstrations-I grant
that everyone has the right to forego a path into art or business. However, in this thesis I
address undertakings that claim value as both artwork and business. On those terms I expect
they are aiming for success as both, and judge a failure in one direction as failure to sustain the
ambivalence. Traditionally, artists who agree to work in complicity with powerful industrial and
market mechanisms are accused of taking the easy way out; but historical examples show that
for projects that are accountable to two audiences, an attitude of productive ambivalence is the
hardest to sustain.
I want to clarify the scope of this thesis, as much as is possible. Inthis work, I will only discuss projects
initiated by those who identify as having an artistic practice. I could imagine a complementary study of
efforts by self-identified businessmen and commercial industry to embrace creative thought (under the
banners of ideation and innovation, e.g.) as part of a broader framework for understanding how artistic
knowledge can be applied to contemporary business practices. But that is not the subject of this paper.
Such a project bears the danger of stultifying artistic imperative, of casting a theory that would contribute
to the codification or standardization of artistic knowing. Rather than taking up-or taking on-the notion
of a typical artistic knowledge, I intend to point out the general terms and methods that I find useful in
dealing with contemporary artwork in the realm of business, and to advocate for one critical tool: a
sustained attitude of ambivalence.
Structure
This thesis has three chapters, each divided into two sub-sections: CASES, covering pertinent
artists and collectives, and TERMS, an analysis of the language and terminology that supports
and contextualizes their work.
CASES sections describe specific artists' projects in the three chapters: Background for
Enterprise Art The Artist-Consultant, and Contermporary Work Where traditional work could be
understood via an analysis material artifacts (ie, products), these projects-symptomatic of
wider trends-cannot be understood this way. Therefore my investigative framework is oriented
toward what is said (the terms they use), and what is done (organization actions, approaches) 3 .
3Borrowed from Jane Harrison & Victor Turner's threefold classification of Rites of passage: what is shown, what is
said, and what is done. Though outdated, this anthropological framework for understanding liminal states is well
suited for analyzing projects that exist between art and business. Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of
Ndembu Ritual. (Ithaca: Comel University Press, 1967).
7 8
CASES are written (and named) with standard business case studies in mind, but do not ape
their format.4 I have written in what I find to be a familiar academic format and earnest voice,
hopefully without formal pretense.
TERMS sections take a closer look at the language that emerges from cases, unfolding the
theoretical and historical implications of their use. The cases used here, under a rubric of
corporate activity, regularly make statements that marketing discourse would call positioning-
attempts to convey the company's (or collective's) place in the market, in relation to other
groups and the consumer. So in addition to reading these positioning statements as pragmatic
poetics (displaying the specific quality of their practical language) they might also be read as
intentional illocutionary speech acts that carefully situate the projects in a discourse, indicating
to their audience on what terms the work should be read. 5 Speech is active and actions speak;
statements produce an identity and position.
Outline
In Chapter 1, I will provide a general background of what I am describing as 'Enterprise Art' with
a short review of 20t Century artists who have dealt with the business realm divided into two
categories: Exchanging Resources / Occupying Places and in Character / as Performance. I
will then describe the terms pertaining to those projects, and the contemporaneous political-
economic shifts regarding the development of Enterprise Culture and the New Spirit the
emergence of affect- and character-based concepts of enterprise. This section will establish a
background for the artist-consultant and contemporary cases.
In Chapter 2 I will tighten the scope of my inquiry, and focus on the figure of the Artist-
Consultant as exemplary of artists negotiating a knowledge-based interaction with business. I
will discuss the work of Artists Placement Group and Ocean Earth as two historical cases that
could be described as offering Artist-Consultation. Then I will focus on key terms for these
artist-consultants in a psychologized knowledge economy-ambiguity, attitude, positioning-
and their foundations in corporate spatial metaphor, situated and errbodied knowledge.
4 see the Style Guide for HBS (Harvard Business School) Case Writers.
s a la JL Austin's theory of Speech Acts, most notably in How to do Things with Words. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1962).
In Chapter 3, I will present a series of contemporary cases that are operating in the wake of
those artist-consultants: Rhei Research, Slavs & Tatars, K-Hole, and Absolute Vitality. I will
then unpack the poetics that emerge from these projects: eg, Conflicts of Interest, Native &
Pragrnatic Ambiguity, and an Ontology of Ambivalence. If these artists operate under any
distinct attitude or disposition, I claim it is only the non-attitude of ambivalence, an extension of
American pragmatism.
This chapter will review a small number of 20th C artists who have dealt with the business
realm, separated into two categories. The first, Exchanging Resources / Occupying Places,
addresses projects of the 1960s and 70s that focused on the exchange of material resources,
and a later shift to projects that emphasized immaterial exchange and different ideas of how an
artist relates to the non-art context in which they are placed. The second category, in Character
/ as Performance, looks at artists who connect with elements of business practice through
identity and personal work performance. This dovetails with conceptions of the entrepreneurial
self, or the tendency to identify with an undertaking.

Through these three chapters of CASES and their TE RMS, the quality of the approaches and
the poetics of their terminology will become clearer. This clarity should not be construed as
prescriptive, or as a promotion of those methods in general. In fact, these terms are largely rny
terms, isolated in order to position nyself as a consultant and business-services provider,
facilitating the introduction of artists and their knowledge into non-art markets. Therefore this
thesis project-like most theses-will simultaneously function as a conceptual framework and
as a positioning statement.

Whether this should be read as a business text, art writing or amateur sociolinguistics, is quite
beside the point; I have avoided disciplinary posturing and specious essentialist claims as much
as possible. That being said, I should acknowledge that I am situated in a social world and
language of art practice and write from that place.

Furthermore, this thesis does not pursue the automatic critique of capitalism that you might
expect from an author with an art background, nor an automatic acceptance of it. This thesis is
not meant to take part in that debate. Instead, it is aimed at understanding the nuanced
complicity of any project in which an artist takes up traditional business practices. Toward that
aim, it is necessary that this document demonstrate ambivalent appropriation of terms from
various sources to describe and constitute a practice that touches multiple realms.

CHAPTER 1 CASES A Background for Enterprise Artworks

9 10
 liberation of workers from the oppression of inconsistent wage
labor. In his sci-fi novel News from Nowhere (1890), he outlined a
pinupmagazine.org
vision for a world that does not shun industry but uses it to create
time for humans to fulfill their creative capacity and their search for
AGENTS PROVOCATEURS: Applied beauty. Building on this vision of workers’ agency, Barbara
Arts Is Redefining The Concept Of A Steveni and her husband John Latham founded the Artist
Creative Agency Placement Group (APG) in London: emerging from the idea that
artists are a human resource underused by society, the artist-run
By Marco Estrella APG sought to take artists out from the gallery and place them in
4-5 minutes business and governmental contexts, recognizing that the artist’s
outsider status was a positive social advantage that could create
At first, Applied Arts, a new venture founded by artists and change and provide consistent employment. Applied Arts Agency
strategists Dena Yago and Carson Salter, appears to be just seeks to create similar types of placements for its talent.
another creative agency. But unlike other agencies, for Applied Arts
the term “agency” refers as much to its business structure as it
does to the preservation of its members’ artistic agency by creating
equitable partnerships with their clients. Yago, Salter, and the eight
cross-disciplinary artists they partner with — painters, sculptors,
photographers, writers, designers, choreographers, researchers,
curators, and filmmakers — seek to create economic opportunities
that would allow them to practice unchained from the pressures of
an art market that favors the wealthy and debtless.

The immediate origins of Applied Arts Agency trace back to 2010,

when Yago cofounded the trend forecasting collective K-Hole —
her first public foray into the space between art and industry. Salter,
meanwhile, used K-Hole as a case study for his 2013 master’s
thesis entitled Enterprise Artworks, The Artist-Consultant, and
Contemporary Attitudes Of Ambivalence. He concluded his
examination of the history and theory of the artist-consultant with a
nod towards what would be the eventual creation of Applied Arts:
“(This project) is rooted in an earnest search for a way of life that
does not sublimate any part (not work, nor family, nor art).”

But Applied Arts’ origins arguably hark back even further, all the
way to the founding father of the Arts and Crafts movement,
socialist writer William Morris (1834–96). Working during the zenith
of the second industrial revolution’s exploitation in late 19th-century
England, Morris promoted the unity of fine and applied arts and the
Applied Arts portraits by Mary Manning and others.

To announce its launch, Applied Arts commissioned

photographer Mary Manning and others to shoot the Agency’s
founders Dena Yago and Carson Salter, and the talent: Phoebe
Collings-James, Georgia Hilmer, Madeline Hollander, Cooper
Jacoby, Emma Kohlmann, Emmanuel Olunkwa, Jeanne-Salomé
Rochat, and Manning themself. The result is ten black and white
snapshot-style portraits in the authentic and relatable style that the
21st-century content industrial complex demands. It’s also a
contemporary redux of Talent, the 1986 artwork by David Robbins.
Robbins acted as a casting agent and paid and arranged for a
group of artist friends — including Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons,
Jenny Holzer, Larry Johnson, and Robbins himself — to be
photographed in Broadway-headshot style. To this day, the specter
of these 18 earnest, aspirational silver-gelatin portraits, selected,
framed, and hung by Robbins in an indifferent grid, haunts the art
world as a critique or a joke about the demand for and view of
artists as fungible commodities.

In its approach, Applied Arts Agency internalizes and applies a long

legacy of institutional critique, reflecting the conceptual framework
laid down by predecessors such as General Idea, Hans
Haacke, Bernadette Corporation, Arts Club 2000, and K-Hole. The
foundation for the bridge being built by Applied Arts between artists
and industry. A road to William Morris’s unfulfilled vision, a bridge to
somewhere.

Text by Marco Estrella.

Portraits courtesy Applied Arts.

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Castle Consulting
Artists as consultants, anywhere or not at all

We propose to create a stage in which we host conversations about the role of the artist in the
continuum of art-as-knowledge-production-as-culture-as-tourism-as-industry-as-(post-)humanity.
The project evaluates the pervasive ideas of the artist as knowledge producer by projecting
CT

them onto the neoliberally connoted figure of the consultant.

The dual articulation of (1) the artists in residence and (2) the artists as external consultants
allows us to make the resulting conflict the subject, material and impulse generator of our work,
which aims to surface the discussion of the artist’s role in extended spheres of the public and
JE

the cosmos. By proposing to shift our residency to an obviously staged public consulting
service, and offering our work as consultants to selected stakeholders in the continuum of
art-culture-tourism, we make the format of the residency the platform for our inquiry.

This scenario is open for the discussions of related questions, such as

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● How can we better understand decision making processes shaping our world, and what

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tools, methods and games are used? What are the rules?

● What are the assumptions of how artists-as-knowledge producers and artists as

aesthetic practitioners should connect to local and global challenges and questions?

● Can a temporary shift of perspective towards the artist-as-consultant create permanent

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impact on resilient aesthetic practices?

● How did the last year of quasi-basic-income for artists reshape their practices, and how
does that affect so far wide-spread phenomena of instrumentalisation of art practices?

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The project builds on the work of artists-thinkers-writers from previous generations who were
interested in the impact that the shift towards knowledge economies have on art practices and
discourses.

We build upon Lucy Lippards analysis of “The Dematerialization of Art” 1, proposing that artists
are essentially moving from the studio to the study, from the production of artefacts to the
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production of knowledge and discourse. This notion was recently extended by Lucie Kolb, who
analyses a shift of artists being interested in affirmative practices of study, rather than positions
of critique2.

Of critical consideration in the reflection of our practice must be the Artist Placement Group,
1s

which affirmatively explored the roles that artists can occupy in institutions of governance and
commercial operations as a form of action research. We will draw on the recently completed
analysis by Cathrine Jackson, who wrote her thesis “Total Economy: The Artist Placement
Group in 1970s Britain” during a placement in the APG archives at Flat Time House.
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Finally, we examine likewise unrealized possibilities and shortcomings of the “Services'' project
by Andrea Fraser and Helmut Draxler. Their analysis of artists increasingly being commissioned
specific projects for institutions which involve site specific interpretation, installation,
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presentation, documentation, and community advocacy, and therefore, artists becoming service
providers for these institutions, is a still relevant and ongoing phenomenon. Yet their project was
never realised, because it never untied itself from the critical-analytical stance in which many
Institutional Critique practices got stuck.
EC

Yet after Fraser/Draxler, the discourse shifted to other questions, also due to the many new
turns, shifts and twists enforced by the pervading digitisation of all aspects of the world. So their
original position - that “the new set of relations emerging around project work[by artists and
curators for institutions]...needs clarification”3 - seems to still remain valid today.

1
Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. UC California Press
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1973/1997.
2
Lucie Kolb. Study, not Critique. Transversal 2018.
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3
Beatrice von Bismarck, Diethelm Stoller, and Ulf Wuggenig, eds. Games, Fights, Collaborations. Das Spiel von
Grenze und Überschreitung - Art und Culture Studies in the 90ies. Hatje Cantz, 1996.

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Since Fraser/Draxler abandoned their experiment, things have changed a lot for artists,
curators, and institutions. On one hand, the figure of The Artist as Knowledge Producer was
colonized by the economy emerging from artistic research funding, itself a consequence of
higher education reform. Producing knowledge was made equivalent to producing research,
which would be potentially exploitable under the new schemes.

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At the same time, and specifically for artists in the European context, the politics of
“Standortmarketing” constructed a continuum between art as culture, and culture as a resource
for industrial-scale tourism, alongside monarchic heritage and the material and immaterial
exploitation of nature (nb: this is why producing this project in a castle above an alpine tourism
hotspot is so perfect).

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The research and discourse involved in the production of artworks is now integrated into their
institutional dissemination and mediation, and serves as its own aesthetic and economic
category established in the digital circulation of information about contemporary art.

Meanwhile, consulting companies have built quasi-socialistic but exclusively internal structures
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in their corporations, yet still lobby governments and other corporations to further push agendas
of individualisation and atomisation. Collective efforts by artists are not rewarded, if not
punished, by the art market, which leaves artists as choosing between potential commercial
success or Resilient Aesthetic Practices.
1s

This further eroded the grounds on top of which today’s hyper connected artists can build
economically sustainable practices. Now trained in disciplines of artisanal craft and critical
theory – to varying degrees and proportions – today’s artists subject values the production of
information as much as the manipulation of matter, space and time as viable artistic practice.
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Thus the role of the artist as consultant needs to be critically examined. We would like to stage
this examination publicly by working through the questions that emerge in the specific context
presented by the Büchsenhausen Fellowship.
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THE ARTIST AS CONSULTANT Projektbeschreibung
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A postdigital performance working-group Consultants sind eine Art kybernetisches Orakel. Neben der Entwicklung von Schaltkreisen und

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Software ist die Unternehmens- und Prozessberatung das zweite Hauptanwendungsfeld
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kybernetischer Theorien. Aber während die Auswirkungen der ständigen Erweiterung von

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digitalen Steuer- und Kontrollmechanismen auf kulturelle Transformation und Kunstpraxen
laufend (u.a. durch die Medienkunst) erforscht werden, ist das Feld des Consultings
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weitgehend unberührt von der Kritik, Intervention und Aneignung durch Künstler*innen.
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Regierungen und Unternehmen, die eine maßgebliche Rolle in der Gestaltung unseres Lebens

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und Erlebens haben, ziehen Consultants für alle denkbaren Gestaltungs- und
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Entscheidungsprozesse hinzu. Neben klassischer Unternehmensberatung erschließen

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Consultants immer weitere Geschäftsfelder und ermöglichen damit das Auslagern von
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Entscheidungsprozessen und Verantwortlichkeiten: Innovations-Management, Diversity and

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Inclusion Strategieentwicklung, Cultural-Policy-Consulting, Creativity-Consulting,
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Bewusstseins-Coaching, und so weiter. Wenn es darum geht, außerhalb gefestigter

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Denkweisen und Wissensstrukturen Ideen und Lösungen zu finden, ist zu jedem Zeitpunkt ein
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Markt an Berater*innen verfügbar um möglichst kosteneffizient die nötige Innovation

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zuzukaufen.
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Parallel werden Künstler*innen an Hochschulen dahingehend ausgebildet, sich mit
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gesellschaftlichen Phänomenen als Kontext ihres Schaffens zu befassen (Critical Studies) und

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mit Denkwerkzeugen aus Philosphie und kritischer Theorie zu arbeiten (Feminismus,
Dekolonialisierung, Neoliberalisierung, Technodeterminimus, Maintenance & Care,
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Projektbeschreibung 3 Posthumanism, Kybernetik etc). Die künstlerischen Praxen, die sich daraus entwickelt haben,
sind jedoch weiterhin in den klassischen Hierarchien und Ökonomien des Kunstfelds gefangen.
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Umsetzung, Zeitplan 5

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Darin schaffen es nur wenige eine ökonomisch nachhaltige Praxis zu entwickeln und bleiben in
Projektzusammenhang 6
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prekären Beschäftigungsverhältnissen. Künstler*innen, die direkteren Einfluss auf soziale und

Budget, Finanzierung 6

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gesellschaftliche Bereiche der Welt haben wollen, um dort mit dem angeeigneten Wissen und
Künstler*innen 7
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Kunstpraxen zu agieren, müssen das Kunstfeld verlassen.

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Consultants 8
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Trotzdem wird Kunst oft durch seine bewusstseinsbildende, konstruktive und produktive Rolle
gegenüber der Gesellschaft legitimiert. Aber welche Dialektik entsteht durch die ständige

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Instrumentalisierung von Kunst in der Gesellschaft und dem Mangel an konkreten Ansätzen
diesen Anspruch umzusetzen?

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Umsetzung

In den 1990ern haben Andrea Fraser und Helmut Draxler mit dem Projekt “Services” einen Gegenstand dieser Einreichung ist ein Workshop zur kooperativen Werkentwicklung von

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kritischen Rahmen entwickelt um über die Veränderung von Kunstpraxen zu diskutieren. Sie postdigitalen Performances, die sich Methoden und Zielsetzung von

bezogen sich primär auf die Frage, mit welchen Veränderungen Kunstschaffende umgehen Consulting-Dienstleistungen aneignen und kritisch mit der Rolle von Consultants im

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müssen, wenn Kurator*innen und Institutionen immer mehr orts- und kontextspezifische öffentlichen Leben befassen. Als postdigitale Performances verstehenen wir die Aneignung

Projekte beauftragen, und Künstler*innen dadurch de facto zu Service-Providern werden. Dafür und das Détournement alltäglicher digitaler Kommunikationsmittel, hier insbesondere Medien
Messenger.

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wurde eine Arbeitsgruppe und eine Ausstellungsreihe entwickelt, in der Fragestellungen der
institutionellen Verantwortung und der Neudefintion von Kunstpraxen nachgegangen ist. Viele
Dafür organisieren wir im September 2021 einen primär digitalen Workshop, der über drei

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der damals angesprochenen Punkte sind weiterhin ungelöst und relevant. Andere haben u.a.
durch die fortschreitende Digitalisierung an Bedeutung verloren. Davon ausgehend wollen wir
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Wochen den kritischen Rahmen etabliert, Inputs von Consultants anbietet, deren kritische
Diskussion ermöglicht und Gelegenheit für Künstler*innen zur kooperativen Werkentwicklung

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ein neues Projekt entwickeln, das eine spekulative Neuausrichtung von Kunstpraxen vorschlägt
und dafür einen kritischen Rahmen konstruiert. schafft. Ziel ist die Entwicklung von Werkkonzepten, die bei einem Folgeprojekt implementiert
werden.

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Consultants arbeiten dort, wo politisch und ökonomisch Veränderungen entstehen. Wir wollen
diese Schnittstelle für Kunstpraxen erschließen um für relevante Formen des Denkens und Eingeladen werden 12 Künstler*innen (7 durch Vorauswahl, 5 durch Open-Call) und 5
n

Handelns von Künstler*innen mehr Aufmerksamkeit schaffen und Möglichkeitsräume zur professionelle Consultants aus unterschiedlichen Branchen.

2n
2

Praxisentwicklung zu eröffnen. Dadurch kann Wissen, Forschung und Erfahrung aus

künstlerischen Prozessen vermehrt Teil unseres sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Umfelds werden. Tag 0 Setup Streaming Studio
Das vorliegende Projekt ist ein experimenteller Workshop, in dem folgenden Fragen

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Tag 1 Einführung (90 min) + Dialog mit Consultant 1 (90min)

nachgegangen wird: Was wollen wir aus gesellschaftspolitischer Perspektive eigentlich von
Kunst, und was wollen und können Künstler*innen und deren Praxen hier beitragen? Und Tag 2 Consultant 2 Input mit Q&A (90min) und Diskussion (90min)

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können die Schnittstellen zwischen Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Regierung für die vielfältigen
Formen von Denken und Handeln von Künstler*innen eröffnet werden, wenn wir hier gezielt Tag 3 Consultant 3 Input mit Q&A (90min) und Diskussion (90min)

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der Transfers von Wissen und Methoden ermöglicht wird?

Tag 4 Consultant 4 Input mit Q&A (90min) und Diskussion (90min)

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Tag 5 Consultant 5 Input mit Q&A (90min) und Diskussion (90min)

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Tag 6–12 Selbstständige Recherche und Werkentwicklung

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4 5

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Tag 13 Trials, Performative Enactments und Feedback Runde

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Tag 14 Einzelne Check-Ins mit Künstler*innen

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Tag 15-18 Editing der Dokumentation, digitale Veröffentlichung Zwischenergebnisse

Evaluierung der Ergebnisse, Projektplanung Festival + App

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Projektzusammenhang

Lukas Heistinger und Bernhard Garnicnig bearbeiten im kollaborativen Rahmen der Artist

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Project Group auf experimentelle Weise den Übergangsbereich zwischen kommerziellen
Produkten und performativen Kunstformen. Nach einem Ausstellungsprojekt im Museum for

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Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lissabon 2018, entstand die Idee eine solidarische
Plattform für kooperative performative Wissenspraxen zu entwickeln. Dieser Workshop ist ein

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Schritt in diese Richtung um dieses Feld sowohl für Künstler*innen zu erschließen als auch für
die Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen.

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APG verfolgt das Ziel mittelfristig ein Festival zu entwickeln, das solche Kunstformen
ermöglicht und kontextualisiert. Langfristig ist die Entwicklung einer eigenen mobilen

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Applikation für interaktionsbasierte Kunstpraxen, und der Ausbau einer kooperativen

2
Genossenschaft in Planung.

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mckinsey.com
Are flying cars finally ready to take off?
8-10 minutes
August 31, 2021Is there a world in which your next trip to the
grocery store involves a flying car? “Advanced air mobility is the
next revolution in aerospace,” says Robin Riedel, a McKinsey
partner and certified commercial airline pilot. “But it’s not going to
be like you see in the movies.”
Advanced air mobility refers to an emerging industry comprising
around 250 companies that are seeking to build electric flying
vehicles—think cleaner, quieter, helicopters—as well as the
infrastructure to use them in cities around the world.
We recently caught up with Robin and McKinsey partner Shivika
Sahdev, both of whom are helping lead our work in this field, to
hear more about how we’re partnering with clients on this topic,
what to expect in the coming years, and whether or not a sci-fi
future is on our horizon.
Flying cars have always seemed to be something just over the
horizon—why are we suddenly making so much progress right
now?
Robin: There’s been a convergence of several trends in recent
years. First, on-demand services have changed the way we think
about mobility. Second, there’s a focus on sustainability, which
these vehicles support. Third, there’s a lot of funding available
—investors who want to be a part of the next big thing. And lastly,
the technology is finally there to do this at scale.
Shivika: Totally agreed, but the fundamental one for me is really
battery technology. We are finally reaching the density and
affordability of batteries where the physics and economics of
powering one of these vehicles starts making sense.
Talk to us about the sustainability aspect involved.
Shivika: Transportation is a huge part of our carbon footprint.
Unless we do something about the entire transport network, we’re
not going to solve climate change. So there’s a lot of enthusiasm
around electrifying the way we move around. These vehicles are a
lot more sustainable an option than, for example, the helicopters
they could replace.
Robin: The sustainability piece isn’t that these are going to replace
all cars, or even a significant amount of public transportation. It will
almost always be more sustainable to take an electric bus or train;
those modes of transport carry more people per trip. But for certain
kinds of trips, advanced air mobility vehicles can really help cut
down on emissions.
What kinds of trips do you think will be common before the
end of this decade?
Robin: There will likely be use cases within cities: flying from
downtown London to Heathrow airport, or from Manhattan to J.F.K.
But it might be harder to replace taxis or other public transport to go
a handful of blocks uptown or downtown. Not soon, at least.
Shivika: Regional trips might be another one, going from one city
to the next. A business traveler going from New York City to
Washington, D.C. could pay a premium for taking one of these
vehicles instead of the train or a plane. A lot depends on the
purpose of the trip.
Robin: Initially, it will be a relatively expensive way to get around.
Think about a helicopter service; it might make sense for a
business traveler who needs to get somewhere quickly. But for the
average consumer, it won’t.
Accessibility is an important aspect of this to solve. It can’t just be
for business travelers going to the airport.
Describe what the passenger experience will look like.
Robin: Somewhere in between today’s ride-hailing and airline
travel. For some operators, customers will have the aircraft to
themselves while for others, they might share the ride with others.
The vehicles will be relatively small compared to today’s airlines
with one to seven passenger seats, depending on the
manufacturer. The inside will feel similar to cars—think comfortable
seats and seat belts, climate conditioning, and windows to observe
the scenery.
Most operators plan to have pilots operate the aircraft in the initial
years. Given the relatively short flights, the aircraft won’t have
galleys, flight attendants or washrooms. To board the aircraft,
travelers will use dedicated vertiports, which may be on top of
higher buildings and require an elevator to get to or ground level
like a large parking lot.
What are some challenges that stand between the present and
widespread use?
Shivika: Infrastructure is a big one. The initial use cases will have
to take advantage of existing infrastructure, such as helipads and
airports—that’s why airport transfers will likely be one of the first
real use cases. You also need electrical infrastructure, as these
machines will need a lot of energy at really high power levels.
Obviously, that electricity will need to come from renewable sources
if this is going to be sustainable.
Robin: There are still a lot of challenges to overcome. A ton of
skilled labor will ultimately be required to bring this vision to life. But
the two biggest challenges in my mind are public acceptance and
getting the right regulatory systems in place. And those two things
are related.
Can you elaborate on that connection?
can the market get? If it’s going to be a $500 billion market, by
when? A lot of people want to know and adjust their business
strategies accordingly. We’re working together with clients to design
their organizations for growth, building digital platforms to manage
aerial mobility, and setting up a complex supply chain and
manufacturing process.
Shivika: Along with that, you want to understand the different
opportunities along the value chain and in the associated business
models. Essentially, if this is going to be a big market, where should
stakeholders be looking to add value?
Robin: A final thing I want to mention is that we’re looking at this
emerging field through a lens we call “holistic impact,” which is how
McKinsey defines and measures the broader impact of our work
across stakeholder groups. We’re asking ourselves, how are we not
only finding value but also improving things for employees,
communities, and the environment?

Most optimistically, where do you see advanced air mobility 10

Robin: Advanced air mobility is a lot cleaner and quieter than
years from now? Is there any sci-fi potential here, or is it going
helicopters, but they still make noise. People worry about that. They
to be small steps for the time being?
also worry, of course, about safety. Accidents might be much rarer
than with automobiles, but they will garner more attention. Getting
Shivika: In 10 years, my most optimistic guess is that you’ll have
the right public inputs, and the right regulation in place, will help
hundreds of these flying in a given big city. But I don’t think it’s
ensure that the technology has public confidence and buy-in.
going to be a reasonable alternative to buses, cars, or rail in that
Shivika: I see four big buckets of things regulators can consider. time period. For regional travel and airport transfers, though,
The primary one is safety. Then, on the technical side, regulators definitely.
need to physically certify the aircraft itself. Examine every part, test
Robin: Agreed. Boston to New York, Berlin to Hamburg, or Hong
them under different scenarios, and so on. Next is training for pilots
Kong to Guangzhou. Similar short-haul regional travel in other
—there will need to be certification there. And finally, there’s
countries around the world—situations where you could save three
general operations; air travel has well-defined procedures for
or four hours—advanced air mobility might be a considered option.
communications, connectivity, takeoff and landing, and setting
Again, I do think it will be primarily for business travelers and high-
routes. There will need to be some version of that for these
net-worth individuals in the beginning. But we hope to eventually
vehicles.
help clients figure out how to scale to serve a much broader
I also just want to emphasize the community piece, as Robin customer base.
mentioned. Regulators will need to make sure communities are
involved in the decision-making and have their perspectives
considered.

How are we working with clients on all of these issues?

Robin: We serve in a number of related spaces: aerospace and

automotive incumbents, regulators, infrastructure players, startups,
investors, supply chain, and more.

One big area is helping clients better understand the market size,
market evolution, and timing. How big is the market, and how big
Consultancy Capitalism Is Allowing Private
Firms to Control Public Funds

The pandemic has brought big spending promises — with some even talking of a post-COVID Keynesianism. Yet, the
rather bleak reality is that the crisis has turbocharged private consultancy firms’ sway over the public sector.

These businesses had already in previous years exerted a grip on economic policy design, thanks to the longtime
outsourcing of public duties to the private sector. But in today’s Europe, the €750 billion in Next Generation EU funds
are making such firms into the one-stop shop for large corporations seeking to secure long-term profits. In this situation,
there is growing evidence that the European recovery funds — peddled to the public as an opportunity to realize a
digital and green transition — will only lead to more corruption, spawning a new type of cartels.

After more than a decade of Eurozone austerity — with civil service staffing numbers frozen — governments have
increasingly relied on outside help to perform functions which used to be done in-house. The myriad contracts
appearing in Spain’s official gazettes provide just some examples of a now old story of covert privatization which has
already cost state co ers at least €378 million, mainly in the last couple of years. The equivalent of the Ministry of
Equality’s entire budget has been spent on a wide array of outsourced consultancy services, from strategic plans to the
design of resilient policies, technical procedures, and PR campaigns.

What these contracts each have in common is that they have been granted to the Big Four professional services firms:
Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Since the start of the pandemic, these companies
have been charged with administering the reforms needed to alleviate the e ects of the crisis — filling in for the civil
service in directing how public money is spent.

In Spain, the Big Four firms are drawing up plans for the use of Next Generation funding by departments run by the
social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which will then be submitted to Brussels for approval. For
example, the entity attached to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition relied on Deloitte to design green policies,
while the Ministry of Economy’s secretary of state for digitization outsourced the audit and grant management service
regarding technological transformation initiatives to KPMG and PwC.

Ernst & Young has also advised the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration in drawing up a reform which
would require Spaniards to make thirty-five years of social security contributions in order to collect a full pension.
What’s more, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE-led government has requested the consulting firms’ collaboration
in drafting the new decree apportioning the funds, while some ministries even opted for a “pro bono” system — with
consultancies giving free advice in exchange for inside information about the government’s needs.

Such consultancy for ministries is already big business. The UK spent a total of £2.6 billion on just eight consultancies
between 2016 and 2020. In Spain, the public sector represents 17.5 percent of total management consultancy revenues,
according to the Spanish association of consultants, whose president is herself a former PSOE minister. We can almost
hear the doors revolving: in recent years, this industry has become the private sector employment of choice for more
than twenty retiring Spanish politicians. Moreover, as a proportion of the combined revenues of the ten largest
companies in each country, KermaPartners calculated in 2015 that the Big Four’s market penetration ranged from 6
percent in the UK to 30 percent in Spain.
The Spanish public sector’s turn to consultancy capitalists is part of a wider trend in the political economy of global
capitalism, in which faced with economic crisis, big companies depend on the state to continue the accumulation
process. Even in France, the once well-regarded elite civil servant has been sidelined by Emmanuel Macron’s
government, which has increasingly relied on consultants like McKinsey, retained to manage the rollout of the COVID-
19 vaccination campaign. In the UK, the Guardian recently reported a Cabinet Office and Treasury letter to senior civil
servants demanding that they rein in spiraling costs paid to private firms — stating that “we are too reliant on
consultants.”

Neoliberal economists, and Hayek’s “Spanish Bastards,” should be proud of this new milestone in the hollowing out of
the state — a process which has itself been fostered by European integration. The hallmark of Next Generation EU, as
Daniela Gabor emphasizes, is the public-private partnership. In this model, understa ed and rules-bound governments
hand responsibility for spending to private initiative, with little strategic thinking or detailed planning. This places blind
faith in these firms’ ability to solve all our problems, from making the economy more digital to decreasing our carbon
footprint and even reducing inequality.

Cronyism

The European Commission recently authorized Spain to spend €69.5 billion on the coronavirus recovery plan — with
€37 billion already earmarked for Iberdrola, Telefónica, and SEAT, to be disbursed over the next year and a half.

In this sense, the Big Four consultants, like Deloitte, are proving that they can have their cake and eat it, too. For even as
they advise some of the corporations who are benefiting from the economic aid packages (like oil giant Cepsa,
department store chain El Corte Inglés, and electricity firm Endesa), they are also retained by the very same ministries
who are awarding the grants. The Spanish government has committed almost €25 billion in public guarantees to back
these companies’ bank loans.

Never mind that in 2013 the former general director of the Official Credit Institute (ICO) was disqualified for seven
years over a conflict of interest with PricewaterhouseCoopers, after she awarded the firm several ICO contracts of up to
almost €1 million in four months. She was herself a former senior consultant at PwC.

There is a long list of corruption cases tied in with such cronyism. A recent report from the Spanish antitrust agency
confirmed the existence of “cartels that manipulated public tenders for at least ten years.” The National Commission on
Markets and Competition (CNMC) ruled against several consulting service providers and some of their executives in the
Basque Country, for instance Sabin Azua, the brother of a deputy vice president in the region. After investigating two
hundred contracts tendered and awarded to those firms by public administrations between 2009 and 2018, it was shown
that their modus operandi had relied on requesting spurious competing o ers from other cartel members.

The firms were slapped with €6.3 million in fines for “very serious o enses” against national antitrust legislation and EU
competition rules. The largest fine fell on Deloitte, the consulting arm of one of the Big Four global accounting firms.
KPMG and PwC were also given smaller fines, as well as British firm PA Consulting.

In this sense, “one of the most serious cases” described is that of the Bilbao Port Authority, whose directors exchanged
emails related to the investigated tenders with Deloitte. A separate section of the proceedings regarding the Basque
Country proved that nepotism was rife in the region. Asier Atutxa joined PwC from the Bilbao Port Authority in
summer 2018, a year after the former won a contract for technical assistance for the preparation of the authority’s
strategic plan for 2018–22. PwC has since been rewarded with more than €20 million from thirty-eight contracts with
other Basque entities governed by the Basque Nationalist Party. Now, these capitalists hope that much more money
from Brussels will reach the territory.

Consultancy Capitalism
If it was bad enough when lobbyists for well-financed pressure groups jockeyed for market leadership in shaping
legislation, today this has been replaced by consultancy capitalism. We have moved from policy capture to an overt
privatization of policymaking. While this has appeared in the guise of a return to “Keynesianism,” in reality this
ideological turn looks like the foretaste of a new austerity era, arriving in the Orwellian name of digital modernization
and green development.

The coronavirus crisis has shown that we need to rebuild public institutional capacities with a strong civil service and
“radical bureaucracies.” Only the state has the capacity to mobilize the resources required to fund the projects that are
needed to address the key contemporary challenges, such as the climate crisis and improved access to universal health
care and education. Both are public goods that we should build and manage within the public space, not the private
sector.

But today, we face something quite di erent: a new phase of technocratic politics, with unaccountable consultancy firms
shaping public policy to suit their private clients.

Despertar del sueño tecnológico

La Moneda del Pueblo

 OFFICE

Ill
Ill
•••
I BL,ef,~Xf.ELL ....,.....lilllllJl!III
Copyright© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002 .
EditoriaJ matter and arrangement copynghr © Timothy Clark and Robin Fincham 2002
• CONTENTS •
The moral right of Timothy Clark and Ro~in Fincham t? be identified as authors of the Editorial
Material has been asserted m accordance \VJ.th the Copynght, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2002

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and Notes on Contributors ix
review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a rctrievaJ system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mcchanicaJ, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior pcnnission of the publisher. I Introduction: The Emergence of Critical Perspectives on Consulting
Robin Fincham and Timothy Clark
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including chis condition being im?()sed on the subsequent Part I Setting the Scene: The Nature of Management Consultancy
purchaser. and Management Advice
British Library Cataloguing in Publication D11t11 2 Consulting: What Should it Mean? 21
A CIP catalogue record for chis book is available from the Edgar H. Schein
British Library.
3 Trapped in Their Wave: The Evolution of Management Consultancies 28
Lil1r1iry of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Matthias Kipping
Critica1 consulting: new perspectives on the management advice industry
/ edited by Timothy Clark and Robin Fincham.
p.cm. 4 The Rise of Consultancy and the Prospect for Regions 50
A collection of 15 papers by researchers in the field. Peter Wood
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-631-21819-X (hardback: alk. papcr)--ISBN 0-631-21820-3 (pbk. 5 On Knowledge, Business Consultants and the Selling of Total Quality
: alk. paper)
Management 74
1. Bu~iness consultants. I. Title: Management advice industry. II .
Clark, Timothy, 1964-111. Fincham, Robin. Karen ugge
HD69.C6 C75 2002
001-<ic21
2001000216 Part II The Contexts of Management Consultancy and Management
Typeset in 10 on 12 pt Galliard Advice
by SctSystcms Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex
6 Virtual Stories of Virtual Working: Critical Reflections on CTI
Consultancy Discourse 93
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Peter Case
.---

CONTENTS
vi

7 The Vision Thing: Constructing Technology and the Future in

Management Advice: 115
Briall P. Bloomfield and 1hco Vurdubakir
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES •
8 Front-line Diffusion: The Production and Negotiation of Knowledge
•
Through Training Interactions 130
Andrew Sturdy
9 Knowledge Legitimation and Audience Affiliation Through Storytelling:
The Example of Management Gurus 152
Timothy Clark and David Greatbatch
IO A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Three Guru-led Management Fashions 172
Brad Jackson

Part Ill Critical Reflections on Management Consultancy and

Management Advice
Figures
11 Charisma Versus Technique: Differentiating the Expertise of 4.1 Dominant scales of demand for consultancy expertise and patterns of
Management Gurus and Management Consultants 191
supply response 65
Robin Fincham
11.1 Process redesign model 199
12 On Communication Barriers Between Management Science, 206
Consultancies and Business Organizations
Tabks
Alfred Kieser
228 3.1 Growth of the Bedaux Consultancy, 1918-1931 31
13 Professionalism and Politics in Management Consultancy Wc-;.:S:
Mats A/vesson and Anders W. Johansson 3.2 The expansion of McKinsey, 1975-2000 34
14 Understanding Advice: Towards a Sociology of Management 3.3 Change in the top ten worldwide consultancies,
Consultancy
247 1998 vs. 1991 37
Graeme Sala»um 3.4 The different waves in the evolution of the consulting industry 38
15 What Next? More Critique of Consultants, Gurus and Managers 260
3.5 Characteristics of the consultancies in different waves 44
Frank Heller
4.1 Top ten UK management consultancies: 1999 fee income (£m),
Index 273 IT share and top four markets served 55
4.2 Reasons for using consultancies on corporate change projects 58
4.3 Patterns of consultancy use in relation to in-house experience 58
4.4 Types of consultancy used 60
4.5 Small management consultancies in Inner London, the Outer
South East and North West England, 1991 62
10.I The key rhetorical elements of three major management fushions
that emerged during the 1990s 180
11.1 Charisma versus technique 194
11.2 Guru and consultant expertise 201
\1'
\
 • CHAPTER ONE •

Introduction:
The Emergence of Critical
Perspectives on Consulting
Robin Fincham and Timothy Clark

Few people, whether in their roles as employees or as citizens, will have avoided the
effects of some kind of consultancy-led initiative. In the workplace a steady strea~
of apparently attractive suggestions for remodelling businesses to meet the compcn-
tive requirements of the times have been developed, packaged, marketed and
implemented by a host of consultants. These have included pro?""mmes such as
corporate culture, excellence, total quality management, the learning orgaruzanon,
lean production and business process re-engineering. Each of these has had an
impact on the developing character of modem organizations and has contributed to
millions of people having to adjust to new ways of working.
Despite their increasing influence little is known about the work of management
consuJtants. Management consultancy has been around as long as complex organi-
zations> but the rise of multi-national consultancy firms, and the fashionable manage-
ment !.ystems on which much of their work is based, are more recent. As a subject
of critical thinking and detailed research the work of consultants is a fairly recent
phenom~non and much remains to be done if we are to develop a broader and more
detailed understanding of this activity. This book begins to rectify this situation by
bringing together in one volume original and innovative contributions from leading
academics in this emerging field.
Our purpose in this introductory chapter is to set the scene for the rest of the
book. We begin by discussing the nature of management consultancy and locating
the subject area of the book. ·We then review the reasons why management
consultancy work is increasingly attracting academic attention. Following this, we
look at the emerging debates on management consultancy, both popular and
academic; these arc traced from early roots to the more critical interest of recent
research, and a number of key themes in this emerging debate are identified. Finally,
we detail the structure of the book, and indicate how individual contributors have
helped to define the new critical perspectives.
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
3

• The Nature of Management Consultancy • created by these two groupings. In contrast, the academic literature rends to lag the
popular management press, so tl1at the research agenda is not being set by academics.
. th tire of management consultancy is a contentions task. Previous Management academics increasingly research the outcomes of management actions
Defimng e na·ther I
tried to determine the b0tm d anes · o f t he m· d nstry and thereby that are influenced by the popular writings of a small number of consultants and
-ittempts
: ·1y I,ave e1firms offering consultancy services, . or t h ey I1ave sougI1t to define a gurus. The focus of this book is, therefore, on the two groups of fashion setters who
1dent1
. a11 ne
1f •asks and skills. Both these approaches are susceptl·bl e to the constantly' are currently pre-eminent - management consultants and gurus.
umque. set o t ,,re of the consultancy mdustry . an d consu Itancy work . N o sooner are Before proceeding with an account of the growing interest in consultancy work,
changing na u . . .. . . it should be noted that there is no really strict demarcation between the two groups.
the limits of the industry 1den11fied or the composmon of consultancy skills arncu-
lated than these factors become redundant because the ~ature of consultancy work A number of our contributors suggest that it is possible to discern differences, and
has shifted. What constitutes management consulta~cy 1_s cons~antly transforming. that there are distinctive discourses between the different agents of fashion (see
especially chapters 9, 10 and II) . But many gurus are, or were at one time, successful
Management ideas and techniques are subJeCt to swmgs m fashion 1_n the same way
management consultants. Similarly, many gurus either operate as individual 'star'
that aesthetic aspects of life such as clothmg styles, music tastes, architectural design,
consultants or own their own consultancies. Therefore, both groups engage in
stocks and shares, residential areas, and so forth are characterized by surges in consultancy work.
popularity followed by decline. By counting the number of_ references in popular
management journals, for example, 1t has been shown that ideas, such as Quality
Circles, Total Quality Management, Management By Objectives, Lean Production • The Growing Interest in Management
and Business Process Re-engineering are characterized by bell-shaped curves of Consultancy Work •
popularity. Thus, while consultancy is an advice-giving activity the nature of the
advice and the composition of the advice-givers changes over time . In this book we The main reason for the development of academic interest in tl1e work of manage-
are concerned with those fashion setters whose ideas and advice to managers and ment consultants has been the increased economic significance of the industry. The
organizations are currently in the ascendancy. origins of management consulting lie in the efficiency and time-and-motion studies
In his seminal model of the management fashion process Abrahamson ( 1996, pioneered by Charles Bedaux, Harrington Emerson, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and
p. 257) defined management fashion as 'a relatively transitory collective belief, Frederick Taylor at the turn of the century (Kipping, chapter 3 this volume;
disseminated by management fashion setters, that a management tedrnique leads to Mc Kenna, 1995 ). For example, in the UK in 1956, prior to the entry of the leading
rational progress'. In his model management fashion setters, identified as manage- US consultancies, the four founding members of the Management Consultancies
ment consultants, management gurus, business schools, and mass media organiza- Association - Associated Industrial Consultants, Urwick Orr & Partners, Personnel
tions, are characterized as competing to sense managers' emergent collective Administration, and Production Engineering - employed around 800 consultants
preferences for new techniques. They then attempt to 'convince fashion followers and accounted for three-quarters of a total market estimated at £4 million (Tisdall,
that a management technique is both rational and at the forefront of managerial 1982). In the early 1960s, Booz, Allen and Hamilton, founded in 1914 and the
progress' (Abrahamson, 1996, p. 267). To achieve this they must articulate why it is largest member of the US-based Association of Consulting Management Engineers,
1mpem1ve that managers should pursue a certain goal and why their particular employed 800 professional staff in the US and 70 overseas. McKinsey, founded in
techmque offers the best means to achieve that goal. Thus management fashion 1926 and perhaps the archetypal consulting firm, at the same time employed about
200 consultants, 15 of whom were based in Europe (Kipping, 1999). So, for much
setters _supply mass audiences with ideas and techniques that have the potential for
of the twentieth century the consulting industry was dominated by a small number
becommg mass fashions. These may or may not become fashions depending on the
of firms who, although they consulted to multinational organizations, were them-
fashion setters' ~bility to create collective beliefs that their particular techniques arc selves nor that big. All this changed in the 1980s.
state of th e _art _a nd meet fashion followers' immediate needs.
During the 1980s, and continuing into the 1990s, the management consultancy
An. 1mphca11on of th·is mode I 1s · t hat management fashion setters compete to industry was one of the fastest growing sectors of many advanced economies. In
convmce the manageme
. . nt au d.ience t hat they are at the forefront of innovation. Th.is 1980 world-wide industry revenues were estimated to be $3 billion. By 1999 this
suggests
are percei·thatd 1f the .
b ideas d_eve Ioped an d disseminated by one group of fashion . setters figure had grown to around $60 billion (Kennedy Information, 2000). The spectacu-
ve
increasingly vi to ed1ess vahd. tha h f
n t ose o another group then the former wil· I b ecorn e lar growth of the industry in this period is further evidenced by the fact that
management ;::sul~::c~r;n~ral. The findings of a number of studies suggest that somewhere in the region of 80 per cent of firms currently operating in the industry
who dominate cont gurus are currently the management fashion setters were established after 1980 (Ernst and Kieser, 2001). Nevertheless, the expansion of
h the industry as a whole is indicative of a broader shift in the axis of many advanced
management role (~:~orary ni°tions of the organizational ideal and the nature of t e
mass appeal and bei r edy' et a:• 198 8; Gerlach, 1996- Spell 2000) . The ideas wich economies away from the manufacturing sector to the service sector. This trend does
ng 1ssemmated bY me d'1a organizations ' .
' are pnmanly . th e 0 nes
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK
4
. uate w11h absolute changes in the size. of s~ctors._It is m~re accurately
not sm1ply eq ess of industrial restructunng m which parncular selVJ·
·zed as a proc ce
'.haracten rimarily business services, moved to take up a more central position in
mdustnes, P . Within this increasingly significant and v,brant sector, management
1 ization Development (OD). More recently a second phase can be discerned which is
these economiesbc. e one of the largest and most dynamic industries.
ltancy has com
consu plosive growth of the industry has been accounted for by th
I ex
In part 'd ne
d for consultancy services from c1·tents. I t has b een argued thate
increase d cman . . . . th . .
or anizations> in response to radical disc~ntmmttes m e1~ enVIronment resulting
fr:m international competition, technological change, recessionary forces and chang-
in management requirements, increasingly embarked on programmes of profound
g . . change (Clark1 1995). By virtue of the nature of actual or planned
orgamzaoona1 • • • • •
changes, managers came to beheve that new skills, values and quahnes lackmg in
their own organizations were needed. Managers were portrayed as bemg conv,nced,
or at least persuaded, that traditional structures, sys_tems and cultures would no
longer do; that their organizations ha? to change qmckly and fund~mentally. This
meant that the designing and managing of change, and working m the changed
organization, required new skills. As a consequence, the growth of management
consultancy was seen as being primarily linked to knowledge deficiencies on the part
of clients and a need to supplement in-house skills.
Allied to this was a significant change in the structure of the management
consultancy industry. The original domination by small independent and specialist
finns changed when the large accounting firms diversified into management consult-
ing. They sought to leverage their existing relationships with audit clients in order
to sell consultancy services. The consultancy revenues of the accountancy firms have
grown on the back oflarge information technology projects and as a consequence of
a series of mergers with the reduction of the 'Big Eight' firms initially to the 'Big
Six' and now to the 'Big Five' (Arthur Andersen/Andersen Comulting, 1 Ernst &
Young, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopcrs). These
firms now dominate the industry league tables occupying five of the top six places
(see tables 3.3 and 4.1). They employ tens of thousands of consultants all over the
world and have multi-billion dollar revenues. The traditional audit has come to
represent a smaller and smaller proportion of the revenues of accountancy firms
which have been relabelled 'global multi-disciplinary partnerships' as they have
diversified into other areas such as legal services.
• Perspectives on the Work of
Management Consultants •
When reading current articles and books on consultancy work one 15 · 0 ften
. left with
h mid-
the impression that academic interest in the area developed primarily m t e has
1980s. However, such a view fails to recognize that this more recent literaturJ 'ng
developed pattly in response to perceived failings in previous approaches to ~tu )'I re
I . , r hteratu
consu tancy work. Indeed, examination of the academic and practmone ther
on management con~ultancy over the past 40 years indicates there have b~en ~ases.
different undemandmgs of the sub1ect which have resolved mto two mam P
'
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 5
The first began in the late 1950s and was pre-eminent until the mid-l980s. This
literature was primarily concerned with one approach to consultancy namely Organ-
very different in character, tone and focus. It is critically opposed to central premises
contained in the earlier phase, and in important ways developed out of a conscious
debate with earlier work. We term this the critical perspective.
Organization Development
OD is an approach to change management that seeks to increase an organization's
effectiveness through a planned collaborative intervention process, which draws on
behavioural science and aims to renew an organization's problem-solving capacity
(Beckhard, 1969; Bennis, 1969; French and BeU, 1995). Given this definition of
OD, it comes as no surprise that the voluminous literature on this consultancy
approach has been concerned with factors that can maximize the effectiveness of
consultants' (or change agents•, as they are often referred to) organizational interven-
tions. In essence, much of the OD literature has been concerned with identifying
actual or potential problems in the intervention process and proposing solutions.
One stream in this literature has developed around 'stages' theories of change,
and has concentrated on identifying the 'correct' number and sequence of stages in
the intervention process. These provide a framework in which issues and problems
are identified and resolved. Hence, problems arise not from the nature of interven-
tion activity but rather from the manner or sequence in which it is conducted. The
number-of stages in che intervention proccss'" have been variously classified as four,
five and seven. And while there is little agreement on the precise number of stages,
tfie aisumpti.On is nevertheless that effective consulting results from the correct
application of each stage to the intervention activity.
Another strand of literature, one setting out from a more clinical basis, is
exemplified by the writings of Argyris (1970), Schein (1969) and Turner (1982).
Here the consultant's work has been characterized as consisting of the encourage-
ment of management learning, and the avoidance of defensiveness and denial. It
differs from the previous strand in that effective intervemionlsviCWed as e~ng
from the mutual recognition and definition of the intervention objectives. For
example, Argyris (1970) identified three primary objectives to any intervention
activity:
l. Valid and useful information - this highlights factors that are creating problems
for the client.
2. Free choice - the client is able to chose what action to take from the alternatives
presented by the consultant.
3. Internal commitment - this implies that the course of action adopted by the
client has to be internalized so that they feel a degree of ownership and
responsibility for the choice.
These aims arc ambitious. In order to achieve them, the consultancy role is focused
on encouraging managers to step 'outside their usual, taken-for-granted routines
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 7
6
. e ic crspecrive 011 the interaction . . . where th_ey are able, sciences in order to solve client problems. The activities of consultants were seen as
and adopang a _srrat S P b ~,e and reflect upon their everyday actions and the "iynciiiymous with the role of professional helpers remedying illnesses in client
rclaove
. IYd'spass1onate
1 1y, .tonso 'or .
se,.e·,ch other' (Mangham, I 978, p. I 0 3 ) . Ach,eving
L• • • .
organizations. In part this arose because, as already pointed out, many of the leading
consequences of sue11 actto . req,iires powerful and uncommon techmques tf the commentators were at one time active and successful consultants. But also the main
_
success Wt·rhin r1f1cse. reI ms .
rs' everyday habits and assumptions . .
1s to be achieved. The audience for much of this literature was other practising consultants, and the
transformanon o manage
al is 'about making .
the undiscussable discussable, about not ta k.mg fior granted consultancy role was presented in an essentially self-congratulatory manner. The
~v~at is raken for granted ... so that the ~ a b l e can become manageable' more recent critical literature has argued that managemenLconsultanqr-is-nOLa
profession since it does not have access to a unique, esoteric and defendable
(Argyris, strandp. of
A fi I1990, .
6).OD literature has developed a type of contingency approach knowledge-base. Instead, consultants' knowledge is viewed as being beset by ambi-
•h· h 1:~gues that etlCcrivc intervention results from the matching of different guities over '(a) their claimed core product (knowledge); (b) what they are doing
,c
"consultancy modes co problems. The issue I1e~e 1s · one o f 'fi'
t . _For examp Ie, Blake (working with 'knowledge' compared to behaving in ways that are loosely connected
and Monton ( I 983) identified five interventton modes, rangmg fi-om providing to this quality) and (c) the results of their work (and its - mythical - meaning)'
clients with infonnarion about relevant theories and principles, to confronting and (Alvesson, 1993, pp. 1006-7). From this perspective, management consultancies
challenging the ways in which clients think, to prescribing what they should do, and may be characterized as 'ambigui!y:-intensive' organizatio~C lai111s ofp1ofcssion-
so on. Blake and Mouton argued that while no one kind of intervention mode is alism are themselves resources that can be deployecftoenhance consultant authority
better than another, 'given a specific problem, however, there is one most effective and credibility (see also Alvesson and Johansson, chapter 13 this volume). Accord-
way of handling it, but that way may be totally inappropriate for dealing with a ingly, the critical perspective has not focused on the utility and effectiveness of one
difterent problem' (Blake and Mouton, 1983, p. 16). Other intervention roles have particular consultancy approach. Its focus has been on the full range of consultancy \
been identified by a number of writers. For example, Tilles (1961) distinguished services - including human resource management, information technology, and '2.
between three principal roles: ~~lier of s~rvice', '~P.Rlier of iEformat!on' and strategy - and on how consultants sustain their knowledge claims.
'b~s_d.ocror diseensing_grr!;.s'. Schein (1969) distinguished between the 'pur- A final difference between OD and the critical literature reflects the different
chase model', 'doctor-patient model' an<! 'process consultation'. Regardless of the concerns and problematics of the two perspectives. The critical literature on the
precise roles identified by such authors, the assumption is that intervention objectives whole has not been concerned with the effectiveness of consultancy work or been
should be matched by an appropriate intervention style. motivated by a wish to improve practice. Instead, the growth of the management
consultancy industry has been seen as indicative of broader social and economic
changes, and the critical literature has sought to utilize the example of the consul-
The critical perspective tarn:y industry to contribute to academic debates in a number of discipline areas,
During the 1980s an alternative approach to examining consultancy work emerged. particularly geography, history, management and sociology. Rather than seeking to
It differed fi-om the OD approach in a number of important ways. First, whereas the conduct studies of the effectiveness and success of particular consultancy interven-
OD literature gained much of its purchase fi-om the fact that many of the leading tions (not an easy task given the reputational consequences that could follow from
commentators were practising consultants themselves, in more recent literature this such an exercise) critical research has sought to examine this issue in terms of how
has been viewed as a weakness. Instead it has been argued that a concern with consultants' claims of success bolster their knowledge base. In other words, refer-
prescriptive advice is potentially limited in its contribution to an understanding of ences to effectiveness and success, and how these are determined and by whom, are
consultancy work. This arises because the OD literature is located inside the activity seen as power games and rhetorical strategies employed by consultants to legitimize
itself. It assumes that management consultants have already convinced clients as to their knowledge claims.
their value and know-how. However, the critical perspective would suggest that
these are second-order problems. They arise once it has been accepted by clients that Popular journalistic criticism
consultants have something useful to offer. In this respect it is argued that the real
problem faced by consultants is how they demonstrate their value to clients in the In outlining the above differences it should not be forgotten that there is a further
firS t mstan~e. This has been a major focus of the critical literature which examines inAuential stream of literature that is critical of consultancy work. This comprises the
the
d . strategies employe d bY consu Itants to convmce• ·
clients of the' worth of t I1eir books and articles written by journalists who question the fundamental effectiveness
a vice (Alvesson, 1993; Clark, 1995; Starbuck, 1992). of consultancy work. As with most journalism, good news is no news, and this
A second difference has · approach tends to feed off popular negative images of management consultancy. In
manag ' bee n tIle pro bl emat1zanon
· • of the professional status o f
emenr consultancy Th OD 1· f this literature journalists seek out the horror stories about dramatic consultancy
the cons,,lta t , ·. e lteraturc was grounded in a root metaphor o failures, and characterize consultants as witchdoctors, prostitutes and con men
- · n as pro,ess,onal I J C ---~
dmving on a b d f ' _, ,e per. onsultants were-thGfefer-e--pFeSG""'4L-as
0 (Ashford, 1998; Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 1996; O'Shea and Madigan, 1997).
' ~ p_gt__koo.iyledge based on advances in the behavioural
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK
8
Th . e of the indusrry that the media presents is poor indeed. Management
e •:gts are consistently portrayed as expensive (charging exorbitant fees) ~nd
:~~cti;e (their advice rarely works), as destroying orga_nizations, as repackaging
old ideas and developing empty buzzwords, as undermmmg the long-term quality
and confidence of management, as running amok if not tightly controlled, and_ so
forth. Consultancy is presented as a zero-sum game; if consultants are making
money someone else must be losing it - inevitably the clients. Much media c~verage
is therefore based on an apparent paradox: why do so many companies use
management consultancies when their advice is expensive and fails more often than
not?
The perspective is thus critical, though not in the same sense that recent academic
interest has been critical. Their concerns remain pragmatic; they do not look much
beyond the issue of whether consultancy 'works'; they simply believe they have
uncovered evidence that it does not. However, critical journalists develop other
themes that are more widely influential and that impact on academic debate. In
particular, they suggest that interest in management consultancy often seems to go
beyond that which can be accounted for by the simple growth of the occupation
and consultants' direct input into managerial fashion; the fascination with consultants
stems from beliefs that their influence is concealed and unaccountable. Consultants
are often perceived as the shadowy presence behind great initiatives. These kinds of
ideas arc hard to pursue in an academic context, but journalism is freer to speculate
about policy initiatives and organizational programmes that consultants may have
been secretly behind. At any rate, this emphasis overlaps with the emphasis on
indirect forms of control, and the forms of 'insidious power' that many believe
characterize modern societies (Blau and Schoenherr, 1971).
• Rhetoric and Persuasion •
These debates then have informed emerging research on management knowledge
and the management advice industry. However, the critical approach referred to
above has taken off in altogether new directions. Instead of regarding management
consultancy as a pragmatic practice, or at the other extreme as a kind of con trick, it
is regarded as a type of social discourse the elements of which reflect issues of power
and the construction of knowledge, and one focus has been on the resources
consultants and gurus deploy to maintain their claims. We now look in more detail
at some of the themes that have proved to be of pivotal interest.
One of the central themes marking out recent academic work (including contrib-
utors to this volume) is interest in the rhetorical elements of discourse. The
persuasive powers of the human agents of fashion, and the ideas and methods they
trade in, are regarded as key mechanisms in building the legitimacy of knowledge in
the eyes of managerial audiences and clients. Rhetoric solves ( or helps to solve) a
puzzle that management consultancy presents us with: the basic question of how
consultancy is achieved. Figures like gurus and consultants are outsiders as far as
corporate power structures are concerned; also their expertise does not have the
accepted status of the sciences and professions. So how can their presumed influence
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE Of CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 9
and the spectacular growth of the industry be explained? The answer, many critical
studies suggest, lies in the view of management consultancy itself as a form of
'persuasion' (see Legge, chapter 5 this volume).
This approach also suggests why academic interest should centre on the rhetorical
aspect of consultancy. These forms of persuasion are mechanisms of power - and,
more to the point, they arc attributable power mechanisms. Despite being an abiding
focus for social science, power is often opaque in its operation; its effects (in
hierarchies and structures of inequality) can be observed but not always the phenom-
enon itself. Yet the persuasive tactics of gurus and consultants are a means to power
that can be studied at first hand. Of course, the usual disclaimers about there never
being enough empirical research still apply; the lack of research on management
consultancy has constrained and even distorted our understanding of the phenom-
enon. Nevertheless, the problems of a limited range of research data arc gradually
being overcome and (as this volume hopefully indicates) we arc beginning to
recognize some of the variety of setting and context in this work.
Rhetoric itself is about the persuasive powers and convincing qualities of particular
'messages'. In the case of management fashion, these narratives arc integral to the
knowledge being disseminated. Rhetoric is not just a means of marketing ideas but
part of the process of commodification of knowledge from start to finish (Heritage
and Greatbatch, 1986; Kieser, 1997). Management fads and fashions are constructed
around the managerial need for reassurance in an uncertain world. Themes like the
control of uncertainty, the triumph over failure, and the appeal of rational techniques
occur again and again in management fashions, and resonate with the symbolic and
emotive aspects of managerial roles.
However, this in itself doesn't fully answer the question of how and why rhetoric
works. The force of mere linguistic tricks and strategies appears insufficient to account
for the sheer influence of management ideas and the ways in which this language
increasingly constitutes managerial identity. So what is the further basis of the
appeal? How precisely do we account for the power of rhetorical forms? Here a
group of critical researchers (well represented in this volume) give the reason that
these ideas resonate with fundamental human drives. At deeper levels of awareness
the discourse reflects profound needs and motives. Thus several writers in the
volume (Bloomfield and Vurdubakis, Case, Clark and Greatbatch, Jackson) stress
the power of various forms of drama. Human society has an innate dramatic
impulse, a need to dramatize events in order to ascribe meaning and sift out the
significant from the mundane; guru and consultant discourses utilize a range of
dramatic devices to heighten the persuasive impact of ideas. In another example,
Jackson (chapter 10) stresses fant"-'Y as a hidden reservoir of emotional energy. The
ideas and images conjured by figures like gurus tap into the human fantasy world as
a way of intensifying experience and reaching the audience.
• The Consultant-Client Relationship •
The critical camp is not without tensions of its own, however. The emphasis on
inducing belief by means of persuasive techniques tends to focus on the achie,:,ement
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK
10
. have emphasized instead the structural factors
of consultJ.ncy epi~odcs, while_ ~0;1~e ' d place ·1 structure around the relationship
th:lt might consrr.un agent~ ot tas 110n anabl Srn~d (see, for example, this volume
with the purchasers of advice. ~ost n;r y It n,; as 'persuasion' insofor as this
ch:r~;ri~~ !•:~ t~~~icri;c;,c~;~n;l~fy t~c ~f s~ial cons_t;uctio~ and underpl~y
:e fi,put of client and audience. Sturdy ar~u~s for a more mr~:3cttvc dpr~~~~c~:
which the dissemination of ideas is seen as a 1omt product, and c 1ents an au
are credited as involved actors. ·· I
· This brings us to anoth er paradox of consultancy, contained in both the c~t~ca
lirerarure and popular imagery, namely the different ways there arc of charactcnzmg
the consultant-client relationship. Some researchers stress the consult.mt as a. power-
ful and persuasive figure, while others seem to be. saying the exact opposite, that
consultancy is a dependent and vulnerable occupanon. Here, for example, Bl~_m-
field and Danieli ( 1995) describe power tactics that enable consultants to pos1aon
themselves between client and marketplace, and to monopolize knowledge of new
systems. By contrast, Sturdy (1997) has described the uncertainties of consultancy,
its reliance on repeat business, and the pressures on individual consultants to succeed.
These different perspectives reflect similarly contrasting popular views. As indicated
above, one popular image of management consultants reflects !h!;:ir. ' insidious power'
and the unaccountable influence they_e:xert over corporate and state bodies. Anotfler
Image emphasizes the disastrous failures of consultant initiatives and the rock bonom
status of consultants in the C)'CS of many managers.
How then are we to characterize the consultant-client relationship? How are such
views co be reconciled? The answer that some critical writers have suggested is to
propose the consultant-client relationship as open-ended and contingent. That is, to
see the relative power of each side to define central parameters of the relationship as
varying widely. Such a view reflects the fact that expert and client groups arc highly
variable in management consultancy. The model of the dominant consultant and
vulnerable client may well apply where the client is entering a new phase of develop
ment and is seeking help from an established monopoly supplier. In contrast, large
client organizations have been shown to do a great deal of business with small-sci i~
consultancies (see Wood, this volume, chapter 4), and in such cases the consultancy
itself may be a cog in a set of wheels controlled internally by the client management.
In this context, AJvesson and Johansson (Chapter 13) stress the variation in consul-
tancy _work, and see the nature of management consultancy as 'contingent upon a
plurality of consultants, clients, situations and tasks'. This kind of emphasis points to
the consultan~-clienc relationship as one defined by a contingent market in expertise.
!f.owever, if management consultancy is defined as a marketizcd and conditional
acbVJty, th~re arc_ still constants in the relationship. Despite variations in degree,
there remam persistent elcmems of dependence on both sides. If consultant knowl-
c.dge were an .accredited body of technique (as characterizes the established prot"cs-
~ions ~nd scien~es), perhaps the relationship with the client would be more
;r~ah_zed and simply amount to the passing on of advice or execution of solutions.
mc:rl:~ perhaps be~ause _consultant expertise consists of a more uncertain set of
Th' k. ;ha~ a relan.vely mtense and intimate client relationship has come about.
is m o expertise above all requires interpretation - to discover whether
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 11
knowledge is needed in the first pl ace (whether, indeed the client has a problem),
how to apply knowledge, how to be sure anything has changed - all factors that
underpin a complex, multi-layered client relationship.
For its part, management too in significant ways is defined by the relationship to
consultant advice. Interestingly, IGpping in this volume (chapter 3) points out that
historically management has always looked for outside advice (and consultancy in
effect is the product of this projected need). From its birth as an institution, in
complex bureaucracies and organizations, managerial identity was linked with the
first consultancy products, the early ideas systems like Scientific Management and
the Efficiency Movement. It was almost as if the complexities and uncertainties of
the management task from the outset compelled managers to open up their
boundaries to outsiders (i.e. the opposite tendency to the profession, which seeks
exclusive rights over particular knowledge areas). So there is an important sense in
which management and management consultancy have evolved together and are
mutually defining institutional systems.
• Structure of the Book •
Having set out some of the main strands of debate and research that have brought
us to the present phase of critical academic work on the management advice industry,
it remains to outline the way in which the chapters of the book are structured and
the contributions they make to the critical perspective. The three sections of chapters
broadly reflect introductory, empirical and conceptual themes (though a number of
other themes are intertwined in these). Part I sets the scene by exploring the
historical background and geographical panerning of management consultancy.
C hapters in this section ask basic questions about the nature of management
consultancy as an activity and as a form of knowledge. Part II addresses a central aim
of this collection, to call ancntion to the growing body of empirical work on
management consultancy, and what this is beginning to reveal about the variety of
contexts in which these activities take place. And in Part III, contributors reflect
more broadly on analytical and theoretical issues, some of which are informed by the
more detailed research now emerging, and which describe a deeper sociology of
management consultancy.
In chapter 2, Edgar Schein opens Part I by focusing on the core activity of
management consultancy, namely the development of the client relationship. Schein
provides a bridge to earlier more developmental perspectives, and questions the
emphasis on consultancy as "advice'. He suggests a range of difficulties associated
with understanding consultancy in this way: the basis of consultancy involves the
client seeking advice, but thereby placing him/herself in a position of dependency.
The consultant is •one up' to scare ,vith, and Schein explores the dynamics of the
relation and the many 'traps' that both sides can fall into that undermine the
building of trust . In contrast to this doomed scenario, Schein prefers to see
consultancy as 'help'; viewed in this way, a more productive psychological contract
becomes possible, essentially through processes of mutual learning and the building
of client self-esteem.
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK
12
. . . em lo a quite different level of analysis and
In chapter 3, Matthias Kippmg J nt of the management consultancy
provides a historical framework for the eve op;;he consultant--dient relation is the
industry - yet her~ too_ th~ changi:~ ~:~t~n oresponse to periodic changes in the
key to the a~alys1s. Kipping ~S:: I t has been characterized by three main
interests of chents'. the industry s ev\:~::e key issue was shop Roor efficiency;
phases: (1) s_aenofic ~anagemen\:. and (3) a phase based on IT networks and
~!!tJ!:'J:";:re:s. s,:a~~ffi~din~ is that during each ph~se the pre-~minent
cons~tancies have been different firms. While some consul~ancleS .~ay ~umve fr~m
one wave to another they arc unable to maintain their leadmg ~0s1non m success1_ve
waves. Kipping identifies three reasons for this. First, the reputanons of consultancies
that come to the fore in any one wave are difficult to change; second, because the
waves reflect distinctive managerial problems, the skills of consultants change from
one wave to another; finally, the ratio of junior to senior staff, which Kipping terms
'leverage', varies between waves so that consultancies. are not. structu~cd to offer
services in different phases. He concludes that these bamers are vinually msurmount-
able· firms arc locked into their waves and it is all but impossible for consultancies in
one 'wave to compete with the succeeding generation. This creates the nice irony
that consultancies seem unable to do for themselves what they sell to clients, namely
the ability to manage and survive change. Kipping also offers some tantalizing
predictive hints based on his model concerning possible futures for consultancy
firms.
Peter Wood examines management consultancy from a geographic perspective. In
chapter 4 he argues that the growth of business services, such as management
consultancy, has important but often neglected regional and spatial implications.
Patterns of consultancy growth have further intensified the uneven distribution of
expertise within the UK. This is due both to the clustering of consultancy supply
into 'core' urban regions and its growing dependence on international arbiters and
standards of expertise. This means that 'peripheral' regions are increasingly depend-
ent upon non-local sources of consultancy expertise, and that more regionally based
consultancies arc unable to compete effectively outside of their home regions.
Drawing on a number of survey-based research studies, Wood concludes that what
has emerged in the UK is a clear distinction in the levels and types of expertise
between consultancies located in the core and peripheral UK regions. The former
consultancies are global or national and tend to be best able to meet the demands
of m_ulti-national clients. The latter consultancies tend to meet the local requirements
of chents ".'ho ~ay nevertheless be regional, national or international in scope.
Lastly, m this section, Karen Legge in chapter 5 provides an early discussion of
some of the key themes that inform the critical debate and the chapters that follow
- these mclude th~ nooo~ of fashionable systems as forms of managerial knowledge,
:e ~ole of rhetonc and persuasion' m the social construction of knowledge and
=-=
bae_,m~~ce of the dramatic format witbin..w.hich knowledge takes shanr.. 0~ the
,....
Lesis of, a d1scuss1on of know!edge wor kers and knowledge intensive organizations
gge ,ocuscs on the strategies e I d b
Total Qual·ty1
M mp oye Y management consultants in selling
anagement (TQM) u 0·1· ·
that th e m· h b. · IZlng Actor Network Theory she argues
erent am 1guity · k d ,
m nowIe ge allows consultancy to present a range of
l1 '
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 13
'good stories' designed to develop networks held together by rhetorical conver-
sations, and to enrol the support of potentially competing organizational actors. For
instance, the 'conformance to specification' narrative appeals to line managers; that
of 'value for money' and 'quality is free' to accountants, while 'quality is excellence'
taps the concerns of human resource managers. It is Lcgge's view that consultants'
success in selling TQM is tied the development of stories designed to attract different
audiences and maintain their commitment to the packages produced.
The chapters in Part II open out the discussion and reveal multiple facets of the
current construction of management consultancy. The varied context in which these
activities take place is reflected in a range of new technologies and management
fashions, and the use of different rhetorical forms. The section also embraces a
number of other themes. The emphasis on different contexts in particular explores
live events and performances, which tend to have been under-researched in the past;
the subject matter of the chapters includes a range of workshops, demonstrations
and live sessions. The section also contains a strong emphasis on methodology, and
chapters demonstrate and utilize a number of different qualitative approaches
(textual analysis, observational fieldwork, fantasy theme analysis, dramatism). A
sequence of three chapters (the last one overlaps with Part Ill) focus on the other
main human agent of fashion, management gurus.
In chapter 6, Peter Case uses observational fieldwork to study a practitioner
workshop on 'virtual working' and the selling of a particular technology package -
computer-telephony integration (CTI). Case borrows from a number of qualitative
methods (actor network theory, ethnomethodology) but his analysis is mainly
informed by the Burkeian method of'dramatism'_. This explores how.human.motives
and behaviQurs can be apprehended thr.o_ugh _thL drarnatizc.d._stories that P!:QRJL..
construct. Case focuses on the 'performance work' of the organizer of the workshop
aruh:he~ participants as they fabricate the 'mundane stability' of the event. But
dr.imatism also critically explores the use of rhetorical moves and manoeuvres in the
selling of technology. Case uses the method to reveal the manner in which the
discourse tries to disguise unattractive aspects of the technology and treat as taboo
its real impact on people.
Some of these themes are continued by Brian Bloomfield and Theo Vurdubakis
in chapter 7. In another observational study of a live event, these researchers describe
Future Focus, a demonstration centre or showcase run by a computer firm to market
its products. The aim was to enable retailers and customers to 'envision' the future
by demonstrating models of futuristic technologies ( the self-stocking refrigerator,
the intelligent trolley, smart adverts). The theme Bloomfield and Vurdubakis pursue
is that 'the future' is an especially persuasive rhetoric. The claim of being able to put
us in touch with future events and perhaps gain control over them has powerful
appeal. But also, the use of actual anefacts to provide a concrete demonstration, the
researchers suggest, has distinctive advantages over normal rhetoric. Usually too
much exposure to the hype of management fashion produces resistance and suspicion
in clients and audiences. So how can the practitioner 'shock the audience into
' action'? The answer the researchers give is that by 'making the future happen' by
demonstrating live technologies, the 'talk' is made reality and a powerfully persuasive
discourse fabricated.
 ROBIN FINCHAM AND TIMOTHY CLARK
14
. . a I chooses for investigation a lower profile
In chapter 8, Andrew Sturdy dehblcr, tc y II been t1nderestimated as a means of
· ·cy Training 1as usua Y ..
type of consultant acnv1 • • k I dge yet this more mundane acnv1ty
crafting and disse~inating ma1rgete:u I ng:wn~1mb~rs of managers and employees
is/:!~::~:,:~~:~ms:'.:~~~t;s;v~;~~e:: case for viewing knowledge creation and
~-i~1sion as a rocess of interaction rather than primarily persuasion. His _u~e of,hve
observation is ~esigned to log the 'immediate responses ~f knO\~ledge rec1p1e1~ts_' so
that the shaping of the message (and of knowledge itself) IS se~n as a JOllltly
rhetorical process. Thus, in the chapter, Sturdy begins with a review of existing
critical research, suggesting that the dissemination process ha~ often been ~een as
uni•directional, and that the recipients of the message (the chents an~ audte~c.es)
have been denied an active role. He then looks at customer service tr~tnu~g
programmes in financial service firms in the UK an~ Malaysia. These are. studied m
terms of a number of conventional rhetorical strategies (threat and seductton, source
credibility, anticipating resistance), and also from the perspective of rheto~c. as
interaction, with the focus on 'employee scepticism and knowledge as negottatton
through trainer-trainee dialogue'.
Timothy Clark and David Greatbatch change the focus in chapter 9, the first of a
group of chapters on management gurus. But they too explore the work of gurus
from a rhetorical perspective and adopt an interactive approach. They empirically
examine how gums disseminate their ideas through live presentations. Based on an
analysis of speeches by Tom Peters and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the chapter explores
the notion that gurus' oratorical power and success with audiences of managers is
related to packaging thei''r ideas ~pelliog stories. Stories provide an opportunity
for gurus to build authority by demonstrating the factual basis of their ideas and
their unique insigllt.Storiesare also a medium through which gurus can establish
their own status within the broader business community by associating their ideas
with highly regarded and successful people and/or organizations. The researchers
show that stories were 'special segments' of talk into which both gurus compressed
the greatest amount of audience response (in this case laughter). Within the
immediate context of the talk this enables gurus to evoke an affiliative response to
their message. The second, and longer term benefit is that the audience perceives
the gurus as effective communicators whose star status is maintained and possibly
enhanced during the event.
Finally in this section, in chapter I 0, Brad Jackson utilizes a dramatistically based
method _of rhetori_cal critique termed ~y-+heme._/\.nalysis. Jackson examines the
sim,lanoes and differences in the appeal of three gtii'ii1ecf management fashions:
business process re-engineering promoted by Michael Hammer, the effectiveness
movement led by Stephen Covey, and the learning organization popularized by
Peter Senge. He argues that the rhetorical vision for each of these ideas has strong
~dra~ ~ - Each guru articulates a v1s1on that derives its appeal from a
mhean:ngful setnng wtthm which the drama unfolds, a compelling set of characters
w o ,allow a clear•. and fa mi'I'iar Pot
I 1·me, a sancttomng
. . agent (the guru) and"a well-
deve Ioped rhetoncal comm · ( I
d . h . d'
umty t ,e au ience). Overlaying. '
these similarities the
1 confronting an anti-consultancy tendency (that views consultants as at best manipu-
~~al:g;:;sg
:r ;p~eal o(f each of the_ ideas is rooted in three distinctive m'astcr
e ,tp ,ors pragmatic, righteous and social).
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 15
Part III consists of chapters that reflect in more depth on analytical issues
emanating from the previous accounts, and that constitute recurring and often
particularly difficult problems for attempts to understand management consultancy
;md management advice. These are questions, for example, about whether or in what
sense management consultants are 'professionals', about how we should understand
the nature of their knowledge, and what we are to make of the fact that there are
multiple agents of fashion.
In chapter 11, Robin Fincham suggests there may be some confusion in the
critical literature over the twin roles of guru and consultant. Should we treat them
simply as different but equal sources of ideas, or should we try to differentiate them?
The answer, Fincham suggests, is that there are in fact distinctive discourses here,
and that to comprehend both a comparative framework is useful. The basis of
comparison he puts forward is Weber's distinction between charisma and technique.
These t\vo dimensions as key forms of social control in the Weberian model help to
account for the legitimization of management knowledge - the guru being the
charismatic who is sanctioned through the force of remarkable personal powers,
versus the consultant whose knowledge is more systematic and rationalist. This
particular framework enables contrasts to be made between the social networks
common to both groups, the legitimacy of their claims as advice givers, and the
nature of the expertise each seems to possess. It also helps with the interpretation of
emerging empirical work, and a number of recent empirical observations are
illuminated by the framework. So while there are many overlaps and similarities
between guru and consultant, still it is contended that these distinctions make a
useful heuristic.
In chapter 12, Alfred Kieser challenges the commonplace notion that manage-
ment science and management consultancy are compatible systems that feed off
developments within each other. In contrast, he argues they are autonomous social
systems that pursue different goals and are subject to different norms. The main
features of management science are publications aimed at other scientists, self-
regulation and evaluation of the worth of existing knowledge, and high communi-
cation barriers due to increasing complexity of problem definition and research
methods. On the other hand, key elements of the consultancy system are simplifica-
tion, the avoidance of evaluation, and the facilitation of knowledge transfer and
constant development of fashionable ideas. These differences imply that the two
systems cannot constructively communicate and that consultants are more likely to
successfully translate their knowledge into practical applications. Kieser concludes
that the possibility of one system learning from the another is extremely limited.
Consequently, and provocatively, he suggests that the two systems should be
decoupled.
This issue of consultancy know-how as contrasted with 'scientific' knowledge is
further explored in the next chapter by Mats Alvesson and Anders Johansson. These
authors take their cue from the contrasting images of management consultancy. Few
occupations trigger such extreme views: the pro-consultancy camp (which secs
consultants as professional advisers with an esoteric and codified knowledge base)
lators and persuaders, and at worst as the shock troops of a brutal capitalism).
 M AND TIMOTHY CLARK
---~R~O.".:Bl:N~f::_IN:__C:__H_A_ _ __ INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 17
16
e between these forms of celebratory
to steer a cours I' h. . f ,
Aivesson and Johansso~ _trY Th refocus the usual mono 1t tc notton pro,es- Notes
... m and hyper-cnnc1sm. cy . ble strategy with a number of possible roles
pas10V1s d . w ,t as a vana , · 1. FoUowing an International Coun of Arbitration judgement in August 2000, Andersen
. lism and instca VIC • h" blighted: the consu1tant as esotenc expert'
siona , . arncular are 1g h ,b k f Consulting was permitted to separate from Arthur Andersen but had to change its name.
for consultancy. Four m p f th professional adviser; t e ro er o meaning'
rcflcctS the traditional VICW o e f a business language and purveyor of ideas· From January 2001Andcrscn Consulting will be renamed Accenture.
t as the creator o rful d ,
rcflcctS the consuItan th ltant acting for a powe an sometimes
. ble' sees e consu , d th
the 'trader m rrou d the 'agent of anxiety tra es on e uncertain-
. tate management, an k h h" . h References
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suggests that flawed ideas might be ineffective in their impact. For Salaman, neither Bennis, W. G. ( 1969) The Ntiture of Orgtinization D""elopment. Reading, MA: Addison-
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corporate knowledge is no more rational than consultancy knowledge (so why Blake, R. R. and Mouton, J. S. (1983) Consultation: A Htindboolr. for lndividutil tind
should the latter require special explanations to account for it?); and despite being Orgtinizationa/ Depelopment. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
flawed, consultant ideas have had significant, and in many cases highly detrimental, Blau, P. M. and Schoenherr, R. A. (1971) The Structure ofOrgtiniztitions. New York: Basic
Books.
effects on people's lives and jobs. The real focus of critical attention., he argues,
ought to be on how consultant ideas and practices contribute to c,ganizational Bloomfield, B. and Danicli, A. ( 1995) 'The role of management consuleants in the develop-
ment of information technology: the indissoluble nature of socio-political and technical
control. Management consultancy is part of the surveillance project and shapes the skills', Journtil of Mtintigement Studies, 32(1 ), 23-46.
internalized cultures that place individuals under the hegemony of enterprise. Clark, T. (1995) Mantiging Consulttints. Buckingham: Open University Press.
F'.nally, our epilogue is provided in Chapter 15 by Frank Heller. In this he seeks Ernst, B. and Kieser, A. (2001) 'In search of explanations for the consulting explosion', in
to highhght a number of areas for future research. First, he suggests that we may Sahlin-Andcrsson, K. and Engwall, L. (eds), The F.xptinsion of Mtintigement Kn0111/tdge:
have tgn?red a _number of powerful agents within the management fashion setting Ctirriers, Ideas tind Circultition. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
process, m parncular academic consultants and academics in applied social science. French, W. L. and Bell, C. H. (1995) Organization Dwelopment: Beha,iourtil Science
He argues _that the inclusion of these two groups may lead to a more penetrating Inten,entions for Organization Improvement. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
understanding . . of the dyna mtc ·
· cond.tttons ··
that fa c1htate or obstruct the process o f Gerlach, N. ( 1996) 'The business restructuring genre: some questions for critical organization
t he di ssemmatton analysis', Org11niution, 3, 425-53.
sk"llful f of managemen t I"deas. Suc h research may reveal that managers arc
t users o consultancy services with th th Heritage, J. and Grcatbatch, D. ( 1986) 'Generating applause: a study of rhetoric and response
the consultants h th . e consequence that it is they, rather an at party political conferences', Americtin Journtil of Sociology, 91(1), 110-57.
0
tend to be po~ dare de dommant partner in the relationship. At present they Kennedy Information (2000) 'Management consulting today', [online] http://
consultants and g~~sahs upes and _dopes. Second, he argues that the focus on www.kcnnedyinfo.com/mc/overvicw.hrrnl
. as resu 1ted tn very l'ttl · , . Kieser, A. (1997) 'Rhetoric and myth in management fushion', Organiuition, 4(1), 49-73.
c1tents and recipients of·d d I e tn1ormat1on about managers as
consultancy work woul~ ealas anb messages. Finally, research on the receiving side of Kipping, M. (1999) 'American management consulting companies in Western Europe
detcmune - the extent to h" soh enefit from eross-natton · al comparison in ord er to 1920-1990: products, reputation and relationships', Business History R,.i...,, 73(2),
190-220.
contexts. w IC messages and ideas are applicable in different national
Mangham, I. (1978) Interactions tind Inten,entions in Organiuitions. Oxford: Blackwell.
McKcnna, C. ( 1995) 'The origins of modem consulting', Business tind Economic History,
24(1), 51-8.
Over-affirmation: “The argument for such strategies is that in the current functioning of
capitalism the critical function of governance is to be more critical than the critics of governance.
Functionaries in a system of power, by presenting themselves as their worst critic, thus deprive
critique of its ammunition and substance, thereby turning the tables on it. This is to go beyond
both the arguments put forward by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) that critique has been
subsumed within capitalism and within the autonomist politics that maintain forms of social
resistance and insurgency are the driving motor of capitalist development (rather than being
reactive to it). This hints at the possibility that strategies for the neutralization of the energies of
social insurgency are anticipated even before they emerge, or what Mark Fisher (2009)
describes as ‘precorporation’ (rather than recuperation). It is in this context that a strategy of
overidentification is argued to be of particular value, throwing a wrench in the expected binaries
of opposition and response. “ (Shukaitis, 2011 Stevphen. “Fascists as Much as Painters:
Imagination, Overidentification, and Strategies of Intervention.” The Sociological Review 59, no.
3 (August 2011): 597–615. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2011.02021.x.)

Overidentification for BAVO becomes another way to reformulate dissent when previous forms
of cultural-artistic intervention have become integral to the very social processes they are
ostensible objecting to in the first place. (ibid.)

Instead of fleeing from the suffocating closure of the system, one is now incited to fully immerse
oneself in it, even contributing to the closure. To choose the worst option, in other words, means
no longer trying to make the best of the current order, but precisely to make the worst of it, to
turn it into the worst possible version of itself. It would thus entail a refusal of the current
blackmail in which artists are offered all kinds of opportunities to make a difference, on the
condition that they give up on their desire for radical change. (BAVO, 2007a: 28)

We speak of over-identification, since the artists in question strategically over-identify with the
ruling norms and practices instead of contesting them or inventing an alternative for them, which
would be characteristic of the critical and utopian art strategies respectively. … [These]
strategies have become increasingly ineffective, since it conforms to what is expected -
demanded even - of artists, that is, to relentlessly and idealistically confront society with its
shortcomings or to propose 'other' ideals capable of rejuvenating society. (BAVO, 2007a: 7)

The aim of this strategy of over-identification should thus be clear: by sabotaging society’s
tendency to delegate its task of resistance to the safe haven of art, it no longer grants society
any escape from its own, immanent laws, but forces it to start subverting itself. (BAVO, 2007a:
7)

One of the reasons why Art Without Borders fails to confront systemic issues in their
interventions, is no doubt their adherence to a pragmatico-humanitarian ideology, with its
emphasis on inventing concrete solutions that can be directly implemented - which is of course
a manifestation of today's norm of constructive critique.
The urge of NGO artists for concrete actions a priori limits the scope for action and shuts off the
possibility of a radical questioning of the existing order, since the latter is needed - or at least, so
it is assumed - for the realization of those actions. In other words, their addiction to doing
something useful in the face of the needy other - which is elevated into some Levinasian Other -
makes them dependent for the implementation of their initiatives on the same order that
produced those needy in the first place. For this reason, artists have to repress the more
fundamental problems at play in the context of the work.

This constant shifting between opposing positions – between over-statement, on the one hand,
and mockerey or critique, on the other – is an attempt by Schlingensief to ‘produce the
contradiction’, which is how he defines the task of artisitic resistance. Or as one commentator
put it, Schlingensief creates situations that not only are clear but also cannot be made clear.
Schlingensief also describes his modus operandi as: “Inviting a multitude of systems to
gather in a dance and that dance becomes the picture.’
(BAVO, 2007a: 34)

BAVO, (ed.), (2007a), Cultural Activism Today. The Art of Over-Identification, Rotterdam:
Episode Publishers.

For difference is never the same; the way is not the same in both directions: Dualisms are
real and not imaginary; they are not a mere ideological mirage but the modus operandi of an
implacable abstract machine of overcoding. It is necessary to undo dualisms precisely because
they were made. Moreover, it is possible to undo them. In order to undo them, however, the
circular trap of negating or contradicting them must be avoided: they have to be exited, in "a
calculated way," which is to say always through a tangent-by a line of flight. (Eduardo Viveiros
de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics, p.118)

Ontological Interdisciplinarity: "there are three ways in which interdisciplinarity is being used
in these processes. First as a ‘logic of accountability’ that uses interdisciplinarity to “help
scientific research become more accountable to society “ (p.198). Secondly, a ‘logic of
innovation’ that tries to use interdisciplinarity for economic growth. The third much rarer
possibility is a ‘logic of ontology’ that generates “something that would not have happened
otherwise comes about through the collaboration" (Barry, Andrew, and Georgina Born.
Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences. Routledge, 2013.)
 Artist as Consumer
Artists like to role-play scenarios in order to
max-out concepts to their logical ends. Art is the
space where practices that cannot function
within generic constraints run up against the
walls and expose fissures in the structures they
are working in. Think of documentary or narrative

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films that don’t quite cut it in a mainstream film
context, or technologies that fail as commodities
but succeed as concepts. When understood as
art, these are allowed to exist in all of their
complexity.
As an art student in the late aughts, my
professors propagated the fantasy that alterity
provided access to an otherwise of multinational
Dena Yago capitalism. Armed with identities shaped when
an “outside” or “another world” was possible,
On Ketamine they maintained that the other is always outside,
and always subversive to “dominant” culture.
With practices emerging in the 1970s, ’80s, and
and Added ’90s, punk negation, slacker refusal, institutional
critique, and art-as-activism were put forth as
Value viable tactics for resistance. But to my cohort,
the proposal of simple opposition over
immanence did not feel appropriate or effective
in resisting the conditions of our moment; it felt
romantic. A strategic sense of imbrication
seemed to better address the layered
complexities of the reality at hand. By 2008,
institutional critique was being taught as a
historical practice. What had once been radical –
even, with Buren and Haacke, to the point of
censorship – had now been wholly recuperated.
As Hal Foster pointed out a decade earlier, the
“quasi-anthropological artist today may seek to
work with sited communities with the best
motives of political engagement and institutional
transgression, only in part to have this work
recoded by its sponsors as social outreach,
economic development, public relations … or
art.”1
My sculpture class gathered weekly to A diagram detailing "Activist Brands" by Sean Monahan.
collectively cook meals. This exercise, led by an
exemplary relational aesthetics artist, quickly
devolved into performative class warfare, with
students bringing everything from Balthazar
bread to discount produce, resulting in mixed
feelings of guilt, shame, ambivalence, and
inadequacy. This was at Columbia. At
neighboring institutions, there was a painter
known for his Beuysian performance paintings

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On Ketamine and Added Value
made with heritage pork fat from the Berkshire
pigs he raised upstate. In Frankfurt, there was a
German painter who apparently ate glass. This
education championed the model of “artist as x,”
or artist as performing a role – whether it be
artist as cook, artist as bad boy, artist as
gentleman farmer, or artist as sociopath – from a
position of critical distance. Similar to homo
economicus, the primary function of “artist as x”

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is to utilize and leverage all possible identities,
situations, and social relations for their own
benefit. From this accumulative imperative
emerged practices where every bender was a
durational performance and every broken bottle
an artifact of critical engagement. Out of this
educational model came Times Bar and New
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Theater in Berlin, the vitriolic blog Jerry Magoo,
and, in my own case, a trend-forecasting group
named K-HOLE. Relational aesthetics began to
look a lot more like aspirational aesthetics,
through the aestheticization of trolling, waste,
usage, consumption, and the role played by
“artist as consumer.”
Business LARPing
To some, art is also an excuse to do things poorly.
If an experiment fails, calling the process and its
ruins “art” becomes a contingency plan. If an
experiment in a structure traditionally
considered as being outside of the boundaries of
art succeeds, as functional business enterprises
in entertainment, tech, food, or fashion, or the
murkier realms of logistics or import/export
operations, it is acceptable for the experiment to
exist as the thing itself. In the case of the failed,
or dis-functional, commercial venture as art, the
failure can be understood as performed
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criticality; it reveals delineations otherwise
invisible and shows how the mechanisms of
commerce function behind the curtain. But,
regardless of success or failure, it has become
expected practice to leverage the context of art
for the purposes of cultural legitimacy and
capital. Many successful business ventures were
born this way, from restaurants and fashion
labels to BuzzFeed and Kickstarter.
There is an ever-expanding gray zone where
groups and projects seek to operate as
commercial ventures outside the art world
proper while retaining the cultural context from
which they came. Cynicism reads this retention
purely as cultural capital instrumentalized
towards individual ends. Generosity counters
that these artists seek to support their
community through heightened collective
visibility and towards collective ends. Art-world
institutions and curators want to stake a claim
on the success of these ventures. Including
commodity-based, art-adjacent practices in
their programs nods to an opening up and
democratization of otherwise exclusive, closed
institutions. This can be seen in the emerging
model of pop-up shop as group exhibition, or the
recent inclusion in biennial exhibitions of fashion
labels that do not self-identify their brands or
businesses as expanded art practices. These
groups are faced with split identities: they are
seen by the IRS as small-business owners and
operate as such, while also being seen as
producers of culture through commercially sold
commodities – differentiated from “art objects.”
A third identity of “artist as fashion designer,
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technology and food importer, or alcohol
producer” is not added to the mix, because any
critique aimed at the broader violence of
capitalism is not being made from within the
world of art, but from that of “basic” consumer-
oriented commerce, albeit “aspirational” lifestyle
commerce. By refusing to identify as artists,
these groups resist the recuperation of this
identity by start-ups, creative agencies, and
real-estate developers that value creativity and
“disruption.”
This turn towards commercial, commodity-
driven practices arrives as the value of art
objects becomes ever more abstracted and
contingent on densely imbricated social,
institutional, and cultural reticulation. As
immaterial artistic practices are both rewarded
with seven-figure sales and called out by alt-
right conspiracists as satanic practices of the
liberal elite, the ancient ritual of making an
object of basic utility for the purposes of
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transparent exchange begins to promise relief.
The commodity in itself offers a level of
commercial purity that feels, to some, less
complicit or exhausting than the highly
mannered and baroque tapestry of brand
narratives and leveraged networks on which
creating and exhibiting even traditional forms of
contemporary art – like paintings, sculptures, or
photography – have come to rely. Certainly many
of the groups that produce such commercial
commodities continue to lean on a community of
friends or a city-specific scene for visibility and
cultural legitimacy, but at least these are peer
networks, contrary to the inter-generational
hierarchy that flourishes in the market-resisting
art silos nestled in our educational institutions
with HR oversight.
Seamless Web
A factor in this turn within art is the nostalgia for
an era before branding, taste, and cultural
context became the primary factors by which
artistic production is evaluated. These
commodities can claim a materialist and
modernist approach, where the value of the
object is ostensibly inherent in the object itself.
Value derives from craft and quality or an ability
to satisfy a specific need rather than from
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exhaustive references to context and practice is mirrored on a mass-produced,
constructed narrative. These commodities in national scale, in that companies selling these
themselves gesture to the democratization of commercial goods cannot sustain themselves
art, through relative affordability and solely on the sales of products without inflating
accessibility when released as consumable their value through branding and context. If a
goods, design objects, and clothing. It is a business seeks to sidestep this, they instead rely
functionalist approach that values art for its on the distribution networks and logistical

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usability and ability to seamlessly incorporate convenience of human powered, but soon to be
itself into daily life. This approach to art is not automated, fulfillment centers. This allows a
meant to create rupture or to jockey speeds and level of anonymity for the importer or small-
tempos in its consumption. These objects do not business owner who is shuttling goods between
strive to open up a chasm, and they do not call mass producer and anonymous consumer via
into question their own objecthood. They do not branded distribution networks like Amazon
produce moments of unease that, when Prime. But at either level, brand value is what
phenomenologically approached, lead the accounts for the difference in price between two
viewer/consumer to question their own instances of the same commodity. Often, the
inhabitation of a body and occupation of space. cheapest commodity is also the one with the
Rather, they are meant to replace the other least identity. A lesson learned from
commodities that previously occupied that space pharmaceuticals: generics can be bought at a
in the consumer’s lives. Why wear a Supreme lower price. The more expensive drug is branded,
shirt when you can wear a Some Ware long- trademarked and I.P. driven. Branding allows for
sleeve? Why buy Crofters or Smuckers when you the mass production of slightly less authorless
can eat Sqirl jam? Why drink Absolute or even objects.
Tito’s when you can drink Material Vodka and Abandoned American malls are postcard
Enlightenment Wine? Why use a Brita when you images for deindustrialization and the bottoming
can filter your hormone-laden municipal water out of an upwardly mobile middle class. Retailers
through a Walter Filter? In this sense, there is a are transitioning to e-commerce-only models
perceived ethics to consuming these that rely on fulfillment centers serviced by low
commodities: you are supporting a community of paid invisible labor and customer service
artists – or artists functioning as small chatbots, virtual agents and AI assistants with
businesses. You may not be able to afford a names like Nadia, Twyla, Tara, Polly, and Alexa.
painting, but you can afford a sweatshirt, and Brick-and-mortar stores have come to function
chances are, the producer of that sweatshirt as pop-up showrooms and concept spaces.
doesn’t pay their gallery commission. But this Today, profitable commodities are largely those
provokes the question of whether these profits that trade in the invisible – rooted in financial
benefit the artist’s lifestyle, artistic practice, or trading, service, intellectual property, and
the cause nodded to in the sweatshirt’s logo or culture. In other words, profitable commodities
brand name (see: Election Reform, or The Future aren’t commodities at all, but assets and
is Female). The artist-as-shirt-producer will capitals.
likely spend more time sourcing sustainable
materials and investing in fair-labor practices Naked and Afraid | K-HOLE
than the artist who creates work out of In 2010, shortly after leaving school, four friends
petrochemicals with the help of their unpaid and I self-identified as cultural strategists and
interns. Many of these practices retain their created a trend-forecasting group named K-
position within the art community by operating HOLE. “Cultural strategists” seemed broad
under a FUBU ethos (For Us By Us), wherein a enough to encompass all of our practices (artist,
brand produces specifically for, and for the writer, musician, filmmaker) and whatever else
benefit of, a community of peers, with the aim of we might eventually mutate into, while
providing financial capital, visibility, and broader internalizing how brands and agencies were
legitimacy for the group. But within the context likely to perceive our position as
of art, these commodities transform viewers into twentysomethings in New York City. A K-hole is

e-flux journal #82 — may 2017 Dena Yago

On Ketamine and Added Value
direct consumers. The shirt, the jam, and the what happens when you take too much
vodka function simultaneously as signifiers of ketamine, a veterinarian tranquilizer and party
taste and signifiers of belonging. While they drug popular before our time in the ’90s.
might not get you thinking about objecthood and Ketamine provides the sensation of having an
phenomenology, they will get you thinking about externalized view of your body and situation. It is
community and identity. like you are your own puppet master, whispering
words in your ear and then hearing them spoken
Retail Apocalypse by a disembodied version of yourself. It is similar
The nostalgia inherent in this commodity-driven to an out-of-body experience, but with less of a

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 bird’s-eye view and more of an over-the-shoulder to corporate clients and advertising agencies. We
lurk. This sense of having distance from and created the publications in a form we thought
perspective on your situation is, of course, would circulate as freely and fluidly as possible –
illusory – you’re just high. The rationale behind PDF. Unable, perhaps, to fully shed our training in
using K-HOLE as a name was that we did not market confrontation and antagonism, we saw
claim to have any macro view of the landscape the fact that our report was free as an affront to
we inhabited as artists, writers, and the traditional trend-forecasting model of groups

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twentysomethings in postrecession, pre-Occupy such as WGSN, Stylus, or the Future Laboratory.
New York City. What we didn’t realize was that the worlds of
The project grew out of a frustration with an branding and advertising already had a word for
attitude common among Gen X artists, who liked this sort of antagonism: “loss leader.” A loss
to neg on younger artists for not keeping their leader is a product exchanged at a loss to attract
distance from the inner workings of capitalism – customers for the future. From a certain
for “selling out.” Like our professors, artists who perspective, this would include some of the most
were a generation older than us promoted radical twentieth-century market-refusing art
subcultural tactics such as zine-making and practices. Far from being an exception to the
abject performance, which had since been standards of established commerce, distributing
aestheticized and recuperated by mainstream free information that can be harnessed by an
brands from Urban Outfitters to IKEA to MoMA. elite or restricted group with cultural legitimacy
They acted as if our decision to engage was is the way conglomerates do business.
motivated by anything other than awareness of Historically, artists have been regarded as
the immediacy of recuperation, survivalism, and forecasters of everything from style and behavior
the deep-rooted anxiety brought on by the to speculative international futures. Trend
recession and student debt. We resented the reports are a vehicle for identifying emerging
unspoken mandate within the art world that behaviors and the forces that motivate them. We
there are only certain “acceptable” jobs for an issued our own because we wanted our
artist: assistant, teacher, physical laborer, community of peers to be aware of the strategies
bartender, retail worker, food service worker. As that were being used on them as consumers, and
if these positions allowed artists to retain their that they were parroting back in their own
identity as artists. You could be a singular artist, artistic and creative practices. Trend forecasting
without having to confront the complexity of an is a form of armchair sociology that identifies
imbricated identity, as long as you worked for how consumers respond to global sociopolitical
another artist, at a boutique that happened to and environmental change through pattern
sell artists books and editions, or at a restaurant recognition. Trends are less about seasonal
frequented by art-world luminaries. Beyond colors, and more about consumers’ crisis
propagating the model of the monolithic artist, response. Our thought was that the more people
who creates their artwork uncompromised by are aware of these strategies, the more they can
other forms of labor, this model normalizes develop tactics based on those strategies and
independent wealth and excludes those who feel use them towards their own ends, whether in
poor, disenfranchised, and generally alienated their studio practice or in their plan for survival
when confronted with class disparity. When on Earth. For me, our practice was about peeking
compounded with other occupations, the behind the curtain, gaining an understanding of
identity of an artist requires qualification – the logic and intentions of corporate behavior,
which often becomes the qualification “artist as and seeing if there was any potential for us to
ethnographer” or “anthropologist,” thus claiming affect change. We wanted to identify the
the position of both observer and performer, and threshold dividing viable from nonviable in the
maintaining a critical stance within that role. The commercial sphere.
disappearance of salaried positions, lack of Our first two reports mirrored the traditional
access to affordable health care as a freelance format, with the coining of a neologism, the
worker, lack of access to affordable housing, and definition of the trend, and the inclusion of
student debt led me to wonder what kind of supporting case studies. The first report was on
e-flux journal #82 — may 2017 Dena Yago
On Ketamine and Added Value

critical distance one can have in a survivalist “FragMOREtation,” a strategy by which brands
state. play with fragmentation, dispersion, and
With K-HOLE, we were not interested in visibility in order to conceal expansion and
taking on the role of ethnographer or performer; growth. The second was on “ProLASTination” and
we were interested in the total collapse that addressed the ways that brands seek ambient
comes with being the thing itself. So, rather than omnipresence over long periods of time. In 2012,
perform “artists as trend forecasters,” we after Hurricane Sandy and leading up to the
produced trend reports like those that are sold Obama-Romney presidential election, we
via subscription for tens of thousands of dollars released K-HOLE #3, “The Brand Anxiety Matrix,”

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where you could plot brands, presidential so that strategists, creative directors, and work- artists – come from some kind of money. precisely because of its slipperiness. It does not
candidates, countries, celebrities, and your for-hire creative agencies could signify to their Genuine risk-taking is usually the mark of have to function to work.
friends, along two axes: from legibility to C-suite executives and clients that the brand desperation, mental illness, or both. We were My inability as an artist or simply an
illegibility, and from chaos to order. We used was engaging in radical strategery. They brought brought in as crisis control, for brands and individual to effect change within corporate
anxiety as a metric to identify larger behavioral us in to provide cultural credibility, not to agencies to prove both internally and externally structures has not resulted in a radical turn
shifts. We crafted a collective voice that made actually implement our work. MTV asked us to that they were self-aware and not ready to die. towards art, or an essentialization of my identity
hyperbolic declarative statements such as “The write a manifesto to inspire their employees We were court jesters, hired to tell creative as an “artist.” Rather, I have been producing and

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12/14
job of the advanced consumer is managing about the brand. We delivered a “manifesto” that directors and executives about their follies. They exhibiting art and poetry concurrently with these
anxiety, period,” and “It used to be possible to be included what we imagined were harmlesss were the masochistic kings paying to hear how experiences. While the economy of language and
special – to sustain unique differences through platitudes like “Breed unique hybrids,” and “If their messy and often violent business of image and the specific language I’ve encountered
time, relative to a certain sense of audience. But we’re for everyone, we’re not for anyone.” Even so, accumulation disgusted us. But, like the permeate my writing, I do not directly make work
the Internet and globalization fucked this up for the most pointed suggestions in the document dominatrix or jester, we were still contract “about” branding. The office is not a site of
everyone.” were edited to make it acceptable for upper workers. Power likes to hear truth spoken in its artistic production for me, and in this sense I am
But as with all well-compensated prophecy, management. Our demand for the cancellation of presence rather than whispered in the shadows, not wearing Certeau’s wig as a diversionary
trend forecasting isn’t about seeing the future, the Real World, for example, became a gentle as a substitute for seeing it acted upon by tactic. The erasure of complexity in both thought
not really; it’s about identifying collective suggestion that MTV “have the courage to put others. In our final report – K-HOLE #5, “A and representation that I witness in my hired
anxieties about the future operating in the things to pasture.” Report on Doubt” – we conceded that seeing the work has made me more idealistic about art as a
present. We dedicated our fourth report, “Youth The World Economic Forum sent a future ≠ changing it. Networks of power and space with the potential to embrace complexity,
Mode,” to generational branding. We described a representative in a grey pantsuit to our fifth-floor influence remain the same. To quote Sun Tzu in and to counter the on-demand speed mandated
crisis in individuality and a response to that Chinatown studio to invite only one of us to Dubai The Art of War: “Strategy without tactics is the by our culture at large. It has allowed me to
crisis, which we saw as a rejection of the for the organization’s “Global Agenda Council on slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy distinguish the making of art and a community of
individual and an embrace of the collective, the Future of Consumer Industries.” We were is the noise before defeat.” It was worse than I artists from the art market.
privileging communication and communities over told, in a tone of forced casualness, that entire could have imagined.
individualist expression. We saw ourselves as phalanxes of corporate executives met at such For the past two years I have worked as a Art As UGC
living in Mass Indie times, with “Brooklyn” being councils to set an agenda for the coming year. A trends and strategy consultant for various Artists have traditionally included brands, logos,
arguably one of America’s largest cultural few years prior, the agenda had been entitled creative agencies and media companies, and as and readymade consumer goods into their work
exports. The endless list of signifiers pointing to “Sustainability and Mindfulness.” It was unclear a strategist for an advertising agency in Los in order to mount critique on consumption,
unique individuation leads to isolation, and when what came of these terms, or what the exercise Angeles. The LA agency’s two primary offices are globalization, mass production, and art-as-
no one gets your references, you’re left alone and accomplished aside from fostering a sense of open plan and dog friendly. Like service animals, commodity. Now you have works created with
lonely. Instead of community building, the corporate responsibility and dedication to the the office dogs are there to absorb the emotional contemporary brands and products, be it Axe,
compulsion of individuation leads to “some “double bottom line.” These were bloated, trauma that their owners experience while they Monster Energy, Doritos, Red Bull, images of
Tower of Babel shit,” where “you’ve been working entrenched monopolies gathering in a gilded hash out content calendars and campaign which are then posted and shared on social
so hard at being precise that the micro-logic of desert to confirm to themselves that they had strategies. These are positions that deal in pure media. On the other end, you have a social media
your decisions is only apparent to an ever- not totally lost their taste for truth. Hired to affect, and I have become intimately familiar manager with a liberal arts degree scanning
narrowing circle of friends.” provide such vérité, our role was like that of a with the language through which corporations hashtags and coming across their brands being
We termed this approach “Normcore,” royal soothsayer, and gigs became a productive narrativize and justify their position and actions. worn and consumed by artists and appearing in
which resonated with people experiencing exercise in failure. We quickly learned what kind It is a corporate logic that speaks in sweeping the artworks themselves.
signifier overload and the pressure to be unique. of work we had to do in order to “pass” – that is, generalizations, thus erasing difference and Of-the-moment consumerism rewards a
Where our hypothesis was off was that this trend to be seen as the thing itself rather than as art- constructing statements on human universal level of complexity that answers the question
was less a response to fear of isolation and lack school imposters. While we offered strategy and truths with ulterior motives. At no point in this “why not have it all?” You can like both Dimes
of community, and more about exhaustion. The insights, any tactics or ideas for execution that work have I felt like I’m engaging in and Doritos, sincerely and without irony. The
dominant narrative around Normcore is we brought to the table stayed there. Corporate détournement. Any attempts to translate mixing of “high and low” points both to self-
understood in terms of normalcy and sameness, clients can’t stand to feel like they’re being critique into tactics have been exercises in awareness and being in the know. Lux T-shirts
not communication and community. It was trolled. To many clients, we were useless beyond futility. I suggested that a light-beer brand with licensed DSL logos, fashion presentations
equated to dad jeans, Birkenstocks, and our cultural capital or “brand equity.” address its role in rape culture and create a taking place in White Castle, Pop Rocks on your
sneakers, and was runner-up for the Oxford It became clear that what constituted trend campaign supporting the implementation of Title dessert at Mission Chinese.2 This sincerity has
English Dictionary’s word of the year. Our final forecasting “in itself” in the case of K-HOLE was IX on college campuses. I recommended that a taken precedence over critique or resistance.
report, released in 2015, was a report on doubt, the collective work of immaterial, unlocatable, bank divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline as a Somewhere along the line it became acceptable
magic, and the psychological trauma of affective, and knowledge labor. That, and the campaign strategy. I developed a strategy for a to be authentic, earnest, honest, and sincere,
collaboration. effusive, intangible, shape-shifting, and value- television show that dealt directly with issues of even if the object of this sincerity is a complete
After “Youth Mode,” we were approached by adding fog of branding. We realized that behind reproductive rights and used the show’s platform celebration of consumerism. The primacy of

e-flux journal #82 — may 2017 Dena Yago

On Ketamine and Added Value
e-flux journal #82 — may 2017 Dena Yago
On Ketamine and Added Value

brands and agencies to speak at corporate the multinational curtain is a decentralized to direct attention and resources to groups like affect over rational thought has, in large part, led
conferences, hold workshops, and create custom quagmire where no one is held accountable and Planned Parenthood and the Center for us to our current state of political affairs far
research reports. Asked about our methodology, decisions are driven by fear. Corporations are Reproductive Rights. Needless to say, these beyond the realm of art. Subjective emotional
our answer was something like “we just hang out people, US presidential candidate Mitt Romney efforts did not result in bank divestments or truths are being taken as objective rationality-
a lot.” In our workshops and brand audits, we said, and people need jobs, and jobs are brand-sponsored resources for victims of sexual driven realities. With alternative facts, truth is
told brands what they were doing wrong at a jeopardized for all sorts of dumb, cyclical assault. The television show opted for artist malleable, and as we see with crime footage
meta-institutional level. We were not brought in reasons without adding reckless departures from collaborations and a fashion capsule collection. posted to social media, forensic visual evidence
to provide tactics, just strategy. Or rather, we precedent. This is why, increasingly, most I’ve witnessed how brands privilege the has not resulted in structural change.
were the tactics: we were invited into the room successful entrepreneurs – like most successful unquantifiable asset of cultural relevance Instead, in the realm of art and creativity,

05.08.17 / 18:42:52 EDT 05.08.17 / 18:42:52 EDT

when posted on social media these brand and forms of language that don’t require images and Dena Yago is an artist who was born in 1988. Dena 1
Yago has had numerous gallery and museum Hal Foster, The Return of the
consumer good laden images function as user- are still a useful metric for brands. You could Real: The Avant-Garde at the End
exhibitions, including at The Museum of Modern Art in of the Century (Cambridge, MA:
generated content (UGC), authentic marketing literally never show your work to anyone. You Warsaw and at the Bodega. Articles about Dena MIT Press, 1996), 198.
material being promoted by the coveted creative could embrace chaos and illegibility, creating Yago include “Flash Art International no. 311
class. Art that incorporates brands and visual or written work that is non- 2
November – December 2016,” written for Flash Art Dimes and Mission Chinese Food
readymade branded products has become instrumentalizable, but legible across many (International Edition) in 2016. are fashionable eateries on the
Lower East Side, New York.
earned media. Earned media is free advertising; parts over a longer period of time. This might

13/14
14/14
it’s what news outlets provided for Trump, which mean making work that operates at a different
would have otherwise been regulated and tempo than that of branding and social media,
campaign financed. Paid media is publicity work that occupies multiple sites and forms,
gained through paid advertising, while owned work that fights for the complexity of identity (as
media refers to branded platforms, websites, artist or otherwise) and form, and believes in a
social media accounts. creaturely capacity for patience with a maximum
This brand inclusive art is user generated dedication to understanding
content. It is not even sponsored content, in ×
which the artist would be paid for posting images All images unless otherwise noted are courtesy of the author.
of the brand to social media, or paid to
incorporate the brand into the artwork itself. Any
critique is sublimated, and the artist, like Leslie
in season 19 of South Park, doesn’t even know
she’s an ad.
Taking on the role of Patron of the Arts, Red
Bull Studios provides resources and physical
space for artists and musicians to create and
exhibit their work. They are facilitating the
creation of work that an artist may otherwise
lack resources for, but that work must now be
understood as sponsored content. While artists
and musicians stage exhibitions in Red Bull
branded spaces, the brand’s CEO, Dietrich
Mateschitz is launching his own Breitbartian
conservative new media platform, Näher an die
Wahrheit, or “Closer to the Truth.” While there are
artists exploring the potential of this role as
content creator, and artwork as sponsored or
user generated content, this is not something I
would like to explore to my own practice. There is
no critique, no position of power for the artist in
this exchange. We must shift our understanding
of this form of work and acknowledge the way
that it is being instrumentalized by brands on the
other side of the feed. Having influential
creatives touting the brand’s products on social
media and in the work itself is their goal.
Artists who participate in this might feel
that their radicality lies in goes against a culture
of liberal critique, that they are being “anti” by
embracing the commercial. But it becomes a
question of scale, of knowing one’s own
insignificance and finding a form of resistance
that doesn’t start to feel like reactionary

e-flux journal #82 — may 2017 Dena Yago

On Ketamine and Added Value
e-flux journal #82 — may 2017 Dena Yago
On Ketamine and Added Value

consumerism. One form of resistance is to go

dark, to stop making artwork that can in any way
be represented on the platforms that facilitate
these forms of recuperation. But even if you as
an artist don’t post images of your work on social
media, other people might. You could institute a
Berghain rule and administer stickers over
phone’s camera lenses upon entering an
exhibition, but then, hashtags are indexable

05.08.17 / 18:42:52 EDT 05.08.17 / 18:42:52 EDT

01 2002

Services: A working-group exhibition

Andrea Fraser

1993 saw a sudden rush of exhibitions not particularly well defined or consistent except for the fact that they
either called for artists to generate new work for specific situations or showcased the results of work
undertaken in such a fashion. This form of artistic activity began, very loosely and at first only for practical
purposes, to be referred to as a project; artists were being invited to "do a project for" a particular exhibition.
Sonsbeek in Arnheim; Unité, an exhibition organized in the uninhabited half of a Le Corbusier public
housing building in Firminy; Kontext Kunst at the Neue Galerie in Graz; On taking a normal situation, the
exhibition for Antwerp '93 at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst; Sculpture Chicago; and Viennese Story at
the Wiener Secession consisted entirely of "project-work", while the Whitney Biennial and the Venice
Biennial included a number of artists working in along similar lines. At the same time, many of the artists
participating in these exhibitions also felt an increase in invitations to do individual projects with
organizations.

In the fall of 1993, I began meeting with Michael Clegg, Mark Dion and Julia Scher in New York to discuss
the problems that we and artists we knew encountered while participating in the exhibitions of the previous
year. These problems ranged from the very practical "problem of getting paid" to experiences of censorship
and concerns over the loss of autonomy. In addition to being expected to undertake site-specific projects for
little or no fee, artists were routinely expected to design invitations, posters, advertisements and catalogs, write
catalog texts or prepare sections of catalogs without compensation. Artists with policies not to undertake
projects without receiving a fee, were treated as "difficult" and set against other artists in exhibitions.
Sometimes artists were promised fees, only to be told after the exhibition opened that those fees were
considered part of the project budgets and had already been used up in production. Artists' budgets were
suspended when their process oriented projects took longer to complete than the duration of the temporary
exhibitions they were commissioned for. Artists returned to exhibition sites a few weeks after the opening to
find that their works were not maintained, not functioning, or even had been removed. Or, at the end of
exhibitions, curators de-installed projects without consulting the artist, effectively destroying them. Or at the
end of exhibitions, organizations refused to return de-installed materials. Artists undertook transitory projects
to find out after the shows came down that they had no rights to the documentation produced by the
organizations (or had to pay for access to it). Or, after clearly stating research requirements and critical
orientation in the proposal, projects were canceled midway when the material became too sensitive or difficult.
Or, curators claimed the right to review and edit material prior to presentation.

In addition to these specific experiences, there was a general problem: at the end of a very active year of
producing work for well publicized and prestigious exhibitions, many of the artists participating found
themselves exhausted and in debt. The institutional and critical support of which so many exhibitions should
be evidence not only did not translate into material or even adequate practical support, but in many ways
functioned to limit such support. It was as if many of us were being expected to work in two jobs: one for
compensation, the other on a voluntary basis. The work - both in the sense of labor and art products - we did
for the specific sites and situations defined by curators often either could not be transferred to the art market
or could so only at the expense of seriously misrepresenting the project's principles. Sometimes this was an
intended effect of the nature of the projects themselves, particularly when the projects functioned to develop a
process with no material form. Even when project results took a material form, the more specific the work was
to its site or situation - and, thus, the more successful it was - the more of its meaning, relevance and interest
would be lost outside of the context for which it was produced.

1
While many of these problems obviously stemmed from a lack of material support for project work, critical
acceptance had created a demand for projects by cultural organizations, that was clearly not only a demand for
particular individual artists. This demand provided project artists with the prospect of a certain leverage and
for the possibility of acting collectively to use this leverage, to represent and safeguard our material interests as
well as our interest in fostering conditions conducive to the development of what we believed was an
important form of artistic activity.

The artists meetings in the fall of 1993 produced a questionnaire on preferred working conditions sent out to
thirty-some artists who engage in project work. Our intention was to create a data-base that would provide
artists with more confidence in making certain demands and which could also serve as the foundation of a
general contract to be developed by a larger group we hoped to convene. At the same time, Helmut Draxler
and I began to develop our proposal for Services.

Services was conceived as an on-going project. Its manifestation at the Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg
was to be the first of what we hoped would be bi-annual meetings sponsored by different contemporary art
organizations. The meetings and its accompanying installation - which we called a "working-group exhibition"
- would be the basis for a continuing forum at which artists and curators involved with project work could
develop a framework for their activities that would integrate the practical and the theoretical, encompassing
material and political as well as artistic concerns. The documentation of historical and contemporary activity
collected to support these discussions, along with videotapes of the meetings themselves, would grow into an
easily copied and distributed archive made available through the installations accompanying the working-group
discussions - all of which were to contain photocopying machines - and afterward maintained by the various
sponsoring organizations. The installation would also circulate by itself between working-group sessions and
to organizations without the resources to sponsor meetings. In addition, we hoped a bi-annual publication
could be generated containing summaries or edited transcripts of working-group discussions along with
presentations of the related historical material collected for the installations.

After completing the proposal and confirming participants, Helmut Draxler and I wrote up a working group
program and invited participants to select one session at which to make a short, informal presentation. These
presentations were not to be complete descriptions of projects, but were to focus on the problems or solutions
a particular project posed for the conditions indicated by the session's topic. Participants were also asked to
bring documentation of projects they intended to discuss as contributions to the installation. A few artists
who were not able to participate - Mark Dion, Group Material, Louise Lawler and Julia Scher - also
contributed material. Instead of complete documentation of particular projects we requested specific materials:
the letter of invitation or initial proposal; the contract or letter of agreement; and summary documentation of
the project itself. The aim of this selection was to put the project in the context of the relations under which
it was undertaken, so as to be able to consider how either those relations may have determined the
development of the project or, conversely, how the project influenced the relations in which it was produced.

Like this contemporary material, the historical material collected in the installation was oriented toward a
re-integration of the issues and strategies developed by artists with the conditions and relations of artistic
production. The historical material focused primarily on the activities of the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) in
New York between 1969 and 1973. The AWC was probably the most significant post-war American attempt
by artists to collectively redefine both the material conditions of their practices and its social function -
particularly in terms of relations to public and private art presenting organizations. Many of the policy changes
the AWC pressed museums for - free admission, equal representation of artists, museum professionals and
patrons on museum boards, royalties paid to artists when their work is exhibited, and substantial
representation of minority artists in collections and exhibitions were never realized. The AWC did however
spur the development of community cultural centers, artist-run exhibition spaces, and political and activist art
practices - particularly institutional critique. It also, through a resistance to feminist issues, contributed to the

2
emergence of an independent women's art movement. Guidelines for museum presentation, contracts for
commercial art galleries and the re-sale of art work developed by the AWC were presented as possible models
for project contracts. The possible influence of the AWC's demands on the emergence of the artist's fee - and
thus on the development of art practice as service provision - was also considered.

In addition to the material on the AWC, the historical portion of the installation also included documentation
of the conciliation of Hans Haacke's 1971 Guggenheim show; documentation of the groups Artists Meeting
For Cultural Change, Fashion Moda and Internationales Künstlergremium; and texts and documentation of
works by artists such as Michael Asher, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren and the
Guerrilla Art Action Group.

The working-group meetings and installation in Lüneburg were to function as a model, not only for Services
as an on-going project but also for the role of exhibitions and art presenting organizations relative to project
based practices. In this sense, Services was motivated both by a critique of exhibitions and symposia and by the
project work itself for an alternative to art organizations defined by their functions as exhibitors of art objects.

The problem which many artists engaged in project work are confronted with when invited to participate in
exhibitions is that many projects do not exist as objects or as installations possible to reconstruct. Services
addressed this "problem" as a problem, not of projects, but of exhibitions as such. To the extent that
exhibitions demand objects (or environments) to be encountered in a physical form, they marginalize practices
which are not production based. Given the fact that more and more artists profess to be engaged in issue based
work, there seems to be an increasingly insupportable contradiction between the concerns of artists and the
objects they produce for display in art exhibition spaces.

What can art exhibition be if not an occasion to encounter works of art in their physical or temporal form?
While video tapes provided Services with a temporal dimension that "justified" its existence as an exhibition
(rather than just a publication), our interest was in trying to introduce a physical dimension which would
revolve not around art objects but around the social interactions the space would become a frame for. The
table around which the working-group met remained in the space for people to use while reading and talking
about the documentary material they could take down from the pin-board walls. In this sense, we hoped that
the working group sessions and the video tapes of them would function to initiate continuing discussions
among those using the space during the course of the installation.

From conception it was clear that Services would only be appropriate for organizations established to serve
artists and other art professionals - cultural constituencies - and not for organizations addressing themselves to
the "general public". Introducing this distinction as a consideration in artistic and curatorial activity was one of
the underlying premises of Services.

Most contemporary art exhibitions, regardless of their sponsoring organizations, tend to conceive the function
of purveying information about contemporary artistic activity to a "general public" more or less as an end in it
itself. Beyond this level of information, the question of what, specifically, particular artists or works can
provide particular audiences is rarely addressed. When it is addressed, it is often on a level of content which
misrecognizes the fact that the knowledge of contemporary art codes required to apprehend that content is
not distributed equally and may not be a possession of the very people who are supposed to be served by the
work. Many of the artists and curators involved in Services try to deal with this problem either by attempting
to by-pass art sites and art codes (along with art objects), or by addressing them reflexively, as such - in either
case, taking the site of the work rather as a means to intervene in a range of social experiences of immediate
relevance to particular audiences. If these strategies become the mode of addressing the "general audience" of
such organizations as municipal museums and public art commissions, or the specific communities accessible
through them, what of the cultural constituencies' institutions such as ICAs and Kunstvereine are founded to

3
serve? Services offered one response to this question: turn the exhibition into a forum for addressing issues of
immediate practical concern to the art professionals and art students who constitute the primary audience of
cultural constituency organizations.

In proposing this function for cultural constituency organizations, Services also, implicitly, constituted a
critique of the group exhibition and the public symposium as mechanisms through which such organizations
attempt to fulfill their mission. The misrecognition of specialized audiences inherent in programs conceived as
purveyors of information to a "general public", effectively limits those programs to functioning as sites of
symbolic struggles among producers. To the extent that programming is not determined by immediate
concerns for particular audiences, that "general public" is reduced to no more than adherents, subscribers and
investors that art professionals compete for in struggles for legitimacy and prestige. Every public juxtaposition
of individual artistic positions on panels and in shows which invites viewers to compare, contrast and judge
artists against each other reinscribes artists and works in this competitive structure, reducing them at the same
time - regardless of intended effects - to their formal or strategic differences.

What did Services accomplish? Re-reading the proposal, what appears most obvious is what Services did not
accomplish. Services did not result in any particular resolutions on the practical problems encountered by
artists engaging in project work. Nor did it produce a general contract, a policy, or an association which could
lobby for the interests of project artists. Services did not come to any conclusions on questions of the threat
posed to artistic autonomy by professionalization or by the construction of cultural organizations as "clients".
Nor did Services get to the root of conflicts among artists, curators, cultural organizations and audiences.
Services was not, through the material collected for the installation, able to provide a coherent history of the
transformation of relations among artists, curators and cultural organizations; of the professionalization of
curating; of the artists' fee or of the role particular phenomena played in such developments. Finally, Services
did not establish the meaning or relevance of the concept of service provision for contemporary artistic
practice.

Were these the aims of Services? In a retrospect which maybe influenced as much by revision as by reflection I
would say they were not, at least, the projects' primary goals. The goal of Services was finally much more
simple and in my mind fundamental; something which is, further, the condition of the accomplishment of all
these other aims. More than a forum for any of the specific issues introduced in the proposal, Services was
conceived as a model for an alternative to what appeared to us to be the available sites within the field of art. I
would say now that the creation of such an alternative is not external to the issues introduced in the proposal.
Rather, it is the condition for their accomplishment.

Above all, Services was a response to what I see as a very basic problem: almost all of the available sites in the
field of art, both physical and discursive, are fundamentally oriented toward the production of belief in the
value of various forms of cultural production - artistic and critical; that is, toward legitimation. One could say
that all exhibitions, whether in commercial or non-commercial spaces, construct their visitors as potential
collectors. More precisely, they construct their visitors as people who will or will not invest their economic,
cultural or social capital in particular practices. Similarly, the addressees of art magazines and symposia tend to
be constructed as subscribers or potential subscribers, not of publications or events, but to the positions taken
by writers and speakers. The point here is not to construct an opposition between promotion and critique.
The point is that there are almost no sites within the artistic field in which producers address each other as
producers according, not to the intellectual or artistic positions they take on cultural issues, but to the
positions they occupy within a field of cultural production as determined by the social conditions of that field
and the social relations which structure it. The absence of such sites has the effect, not only of ensuring the
atomization of producers in competitive struggles for professional legitimacy, but also of limiting the
development of a framework in which the function and effect - not only the symbolic value - of artistic
practices can be evaluated.

4
In a certain way I would say that the fundamental ambition of Services was to create a forum in which
participating artists and curators, as well as visitors to the installation, would reflect on project work
specifically - as well as art practice generally - not only in terms of symbolic systems, thematized or formalized,
but also in terms of the conditions and relations which determine them and which they may resist or
reproduce. The practical problems which arise as a result of project work, and the clear relation between those
problems and the strategies of individual works, created a basis for such reflection. And that reflection, in
turn, would be the condition of achieving a meaningful resolution of practical problems.

It may seem obvious that any effort by artists and curators to resolve their practical problems would require
that they address each other as producers according to the common practical problems they endeavor to
resolve. What may be less obvious is that many of those problems themselves stem from, not the absence of
such forums as such, but from the structure which prevents them from developing the orientation of artistic
sites toward the function of legitimation. The reluctance of organizations to provide adequate fees, for
example, can be seen to stem from the fact that most cultural institutions still see their role as being one of
identifying, publicizing and consecrating artistic tendencies - a service from which artists should later profit,
with the help of gallerists, through the sale of thus legitimized work.

The project Services had two basic motivating circumstances. One was explicitly stated in the proposal and
dealt with in the working group discussions: the practical and material problems encountered by artists
engaged in project work. The other was never explicitly stated but was, perhaps even more fundamental,
determining the form of the project as well as the material collected for the installation: that is, the absence of
sites within the artistic field in which cultural producers address each other as producers. Most of the aspects
of the project introduced in the proposal may not have been developed or accomplished. The historical
material gathered for the installation may have been inconclusive. The concept of Services itself was never
really even discussed. Yet despite all of these apparent failings I would say the project was a success. It exists as
a model for a forum which is, I believe, the condition of possibility for the accomplishment of these other
aims. In retrospect I would say that this could only ever have been its objective goal.

[from: Beatrice von Bismarck, Diethelm Stoller, Ulf Wuggenig (eds.), Games, Fights, Collaboration. Das Spiel
von Grenze und Überschreitung, Stuttgart: Cantz 1996]

5
 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/us/mckinsey-ICE-immigration.html

How McKinsey Helped the Trump Administration Carry Out Its Immigration
Policies
Newly uncovered documents show the consulting giant helped ICE find “detention savings opportunities” —
including measures the agencyʼs staff sometimes viewed as too harsh on immigrants.

By Ian MacDougall

Published Dec. 3, 2019 Updated Feb. 24, 2021

This article is copublished with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom.

Just days after he took office in 2017, President Trump set out to make good on his campaign pledge to halt illegal
immigration. In a pair of executive orders, he ordered “all legally available resources” to be shifted to border
detention facilities, and called for hiring 10,000 new immigration officers.

The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already
had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama
administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting
migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.

ICE quickly redirected McKinsey toward helping the agency figure out how to execute the White House’s
clampdown on illegal immigration.

But the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE workers
uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of
detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500
pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information
Act.

McKinsey’s team also looked for ways to accelerate the deportation process, provoking worries among some ICE
staff members that the recommendations risked short-circuiting due-process protections for migrants fighting
removal from the United States. The consultants, three people who worked on the project said, seemed focused
solely on cutting costs and speeding up deportations — actions whose success could be measured in numbers —
with little acknowledgment that these policies affected thousands of human beings.

In what one former official described as “heated meetings” with McKinsey consultants, agency staff members
questioned whether saving pennies on food and medical care for detainees justified the potential human cost.

But the consulting firm’s sway at ICE grew to the point that McKinsey’s staff even ghostwrote a government
contracting document that defined the consulting team’s own responsibilities and justified the firm’s retention, a
contract extension worth $2.2 million. “Can they do that?” an ICE official wrote to a contracting officer in May 2017.

The response reflects how deeply ICE had come to rely on McKinsey’s assistance. “Well it obviously isn’t ideal to
have a contractor tell us what we want to ask them to do,” the contracting officer replied. But unless someone from
the government could articulate the agency’s objectives, the officer added, “what other option is there?” ICE
extended the contract.
The New York Times reported last year that McKinsey ultimately did more than $20 million in consulting work for
ICE, a commitment to one of the Trump administration’s most controversial endeavors that raised concerns among
some of McKinsey’s employees and former partners. The firm’s global managing partner, Kevin Sneader, assured
them in a 2018 email that the firm had never focused on developing, advising or implementing immigration policies.
He said McKinsey “will not, under any circumstances, engage in work, anywhere in the world, that advances or
assists policies that are at odds with our values.”

But the new documents and interviews reveal that the firm was deeply involved in executing policies fundamental
to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. McKinsey’s recommendations for spending cuts went too far
for some career ICE employees, and a number of the proposals were never carried out.

McKinsey has faced mounting scrutiny over the past two years, as reports by The Times, ProPublica and others
have raised questions about whether the firm has crossed ethical and legal lines in pursuit of profit. The consultancy
returned millions of dollars in fees after South African authorities implicated it in a profiteering scheme. The
exposure of its history advising opioid makers on ways to bolster sales prompted the usually secretive firm to
declare publicly that its opioid work had ended. Last month, The Times reported that McKinsey’s bankruptcy
practice is the subject of a federal criminal investigation. The firm has denied wrongdoing in each case, but
apologized for missteps in South Africa.

“The scope of our work, contractually agreed to during the Obama administration, was designed to help the agency
find ways to operate more effectively and cost-efficiently,” a McKinsey spokesman said of the firm’s consulting for
ICE. “The focus of our work did not change as a result of these executive orders. The assertion that McKinsey’s
work was ‘redirected’ because of these orders is inaccurate.”

In a statement, an ICE spokesman, Bryan D. Cox, said McKinsey’s work “yielded measurable improvements in
mission outcomes, including a notable decrease in the time to remove aliens with a final order of removal.”

McKinsey responded quickly to Mr. Trump’s executive orders on immigration. On Feb. 13, the consultants presented
ICE officials a set of “initiatives to improve ICE Hiring and address the Executive Order,” according to an
accompanying slide deck.

Hiring 10,000 immigration officers was an immense undertaking, and similar attempts to swiftly ramp up staffing,
under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, ended badly. They resulted in lax hiring
standards, according to experts, and a subsequent spike in misconduct and corruption cases among Border Patrol
officers.

To expedite the process in 2017, McKinsey proposed hiring en masse, including what the consultants called “super
one-stop hiring”: ICE could rent a gymnasium or similar space and compress the recruitment, screening and hiring
process into a single day. The consultants, they wrote in a slide deck, aimed “to reduce time to hire by 30-50%
(hundreds of days)” — significantly improving ICE’s capability to staff the president’s immigration crackdown.

By the summer of 2017, according to contracting records and a former ICE official, the agency had begun to adopt
McKinsey’s proposals to speed up hiring. (ICE has hired only a fraction of the 10,000 officers called for because of
budget constraints.)

Within months, McKinsey was making significant strides toward advancing the Trump administration’s policy
goals. The firm’s work showed “quantifiable benefits,” ICE officials stated in an October 2017 contracting document,
“including increased total removals and reductions in time to remove a detainee.”

As some McKinsey consultants worked on the staffing challenge, others took aim at the logistical hurdles posed by
an expected influx of detainees flowing from the Trump administration’s directive to enforce immigration laws more
strictly.
The consulting team became so driven to save money, people involved in the project say, that consultants
sometimes ignored — and even complained to agency managers about — ICE workers who said that McKinsey’s
cost-cutting proposals risked jeopardizing the health and safety of migrants.

Mr. Cox, the ICE spokesman, denied that McKinsey’s recommendations could harm the well-being or due-process
rights of detainees. McKinsey’s spokesman said the firm’s work had aimed to identify where detention-center
contractors were overcharging ICE — long a concern of watchdog agencies — and to propose remedies.

McKinsey, the firm’s presentations show, pursued “detention savings opportunities” in blunt ways. The consultants
encouraged ICE to adopt a “longer-term strategy” with “operational decisions to fill low-cost beds before expensive
beds.” In practice, that meant shunting detainees to less expensive — and sometimes less safe — facilities, often
rural county jails.

“There’s a concerted effort to try to ship folks ICE sees as long-term detainees to these low-cost facilities run by
local sheriffs’ offices where conditions are abysmal,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil
Liberties Union who focuses on issues involving the detention of immigrants. The A.C.L.U. has brought several
lawsuits against ICE, including over its detention policies, during the Trump administration.

McKinsey also looked to cut costs by lowering standards at ICE detention facilities, according to an internal ICE
email and two former agency officials. McKinsey, an ICE supervisor wrote in an email dated March 30, 2017, was
“looking for ways to cut or reduce standards because they are too costly,” albeit, the supervisor added, “without
sacrificing quality, safety and mission.”

The consultants found it difficult to attach a dollar figure to the standards themselves, the former ICE officials said.
So they shifted their focus to trimming operating costs at several detention centers and coaching agency officials as
they renegotiated contracts with companies managing some of those facilities. The renegotiated contracts saved
ICE $16 million, according to Mr. Cox, the ICE spokesman, who insisted that no “degradation to service” resulted.

One of Mr. Trump’s executive orders had directed immigration agencies to concentrate resources near the southern
border, and the consultants prioritized slashing costs at those facilities.

The McKinsey proposals that most troubled agency workers — like cutting spending on food, medical care and
maintenance — were not incorporated into the new contracts, one former ICE official said. Internal project emails
point to cutbacks in guard staffing as the source of most cost savings.

But the McKinsey recommendations remain on the books at ICE. The consultants analyzed how the agency could
save money at detention centers beyond those where they helped renegotiate contracts — including several near
the border, like ICE’s largest family-detention facility, in Dilley, Texas — and Mr. Cox said these analyses remain
reference points for future efforts to curb spending. A report issued this summer by the Department of Homeland
Security’s inspector general raised concerns about food quality and upkeep at several ICE facilities, both categories
on which McKinsey recommended ICE spend less.

McKinsey’s work at ICE ended in July 2018. Among agency officials, there was growing dissatisfaction with the
consultants’ work, and leadership turnover in the agency had left the consulting firm with few defenders, two
former ICE officials said.

But the firm’s work supporting the Trump administration’s immigration clampdown has continued. Just a week
after Mr. Sneader announced that the ICE engagement was over, McKinsey signed a $2 million contract to advise
Customs and Border Protection as it drafted a new border strategy to replace the Obama administration’s approach,
and it has since signed still another contract with C.B.P. — worth up to $8.4 million — that will keep the firm at the
agency at least through September 2020.
Among the border strategy priorities listed in McKinsey slide decks for the C.B.P. are: “invest in impedance and
denial capability,” “work with partner agencies and components to maximize programs that discourage illegal
entries” and, in one instance, simply, “Wall.”
Italy’s Government Is Outsourcing Its
Economic Strategy To Private Management
Consultants McKinsey

Upon its formation last month, Mario Draghi’s new government was heralded by almost all Italian and international
media as a rescue operation. Where the former European Central Bank (ECB) chief Draghi had “saved the euro” in the
2010s, most outlets gushed over “Super Mario” and his plan to “save Italy” by splashing a mooted €209 billion in
European recovery fund cash while “reforming” its lackluster economy.

The kind of “reforms” this meant went unmentioned — and after all, this government bears no relation to voter
decisions, or the coalitions that ran in the last general election. But for the fourth time since the 1990s, a president called
on a technocrat from the world of finance and banking to form a cabinet, halfway through a parliament. Eight of Draghi’s
twenty-three ministers are unelected technocrats, in a so-called government of experts.

If these figures are not party-political, they have similar backgrounds and instincts. Economy minister Daniele Franco is
a former Bank of Italy official who drafted the famous 2011 ECB letter instructing the government to implement
privatizations and cut back collective bargaining. Former Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao — today innovation and digital
transition minister — is a former partner at private consultants McKinsey & Company.

Now, it has been revealed that McKinsey is going to be tasked with writing Italy’s economic plan for the coming period,
to be submitted for review by the European Commission at the end of next month. Notorious for its role in the Enron
scandal as well as the 2008 financial crisis — as it promoted the boundless securitization of mortgage assets — and the
botched vaccine rollout in France, the firm is now being called on to shape the Draghi government’s “reform” agenda.

La Repubblica, the country’s leading center-left daily, gushed over the move. “Faced with a race against time,” Draghi’s
government “has assumed the position of a private corporation faced with a new business opportunity that isn’t part of
its core activities.” While this same paper reported on March 1 that the need for “hurry” meant Draghi himself would
write the recovery plan, together with finance minister Franco, this has now been outsourced.

The suggestion that this is a purely “technical” collaboration — that McKinsey’s choices will not be political — is
patently absurd, not least given that this claim is also widely made for Draghi’s “technical” government itself. For
decades, the imposition of neoliberal recipes in Italy has been advanced through this same procedure, with the agenda
advanced by privatizers couched in the dogma of “unavoidable choices.”

For now, Draghi does enjoy high public approval ratings — just as predecessors like Mario Monti did in the early
months of media acclaim. But Italians will soon find out that he doesn’t have €209 billion in new money to spend (the
total in loans and grants from the European fund, before considering Italian contributions to it), but closer to €10 billion
a year— a pittance compared to the €160 billion e ect of the pandemic on Italy.

Upon his appointment by president Sergio Mattarella, many of Draghi’s press cheerleaders insisted this wouldn’t be like
the government led by Mario Monti in 2011–13, whose austerity measures destroyed demand and brought a 3 percent
fall in GDP. While Draghi put his name to the ECB letter which prepared the way for Monti’s “reforms,” he has more
recently admitted that we will have to live with the reality of high public debt.

Yet Draghi’s recent appointments confirm that the same old figures have again captured the government. Telling was
the choice of Francesco Giavazzi, a professor at Milan’s Bocconi University, as economic adviser: where his predecessor,
Mariana Mazzucato, is a renowned Keynesian, Giavazzi is an avowed Thatcherite and advocate of the European
“external bind,” (i.e., using EU financing conditions to reshape Italy’s labor market and public services).

As Lorenzo Zamponi writes, it is quite possible that there is some shift since the “expansive austerity” of the 2010s —
that is, Draghi will put economic reforms above a simple reduction in overall spending. Yet the appointment of
McKinsey and Bocconi-school ideologues points toward the same gospel of privatization and deregulation that
technocrats have been imposing on Italy for decades, without ever winning popular backing.

The outlandishly Blairite Matteo Renzi played a decisive role in this government’s rise, and while his own Italia Viva
party polls under 3 percent support, figures of similar political orientation are once again in power. The soft-left forces
who backed the previous administration have, however, also fallen in line behind Draghi, with the previous Five Star–
Democratic coalition’s layo s ban likely one of the first casualties of the new agenda.

Government by experts may sound good — but only so long as we forget all the previous rounds of such “cures,” which
have helped push Italian GDP below the level it was at in 1999. But La Repubblica is, in its own way, quite right to
compare this move to a corporation calling in McKinsey. For a failing business isn’t a democracy either — and when the
consultants call for restructuring, it’s the workers who get screwed.

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die „Senkung der Ich-Schranke“ im kollektiven
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When Consultants Reign

Saudi deputy crown prince Muhammad bin Salman’s proposal to privatize the oil behemoth Aramco is the biggest news
in global business this year. Saudi citizens — not to mention Aramco executives — are stunned. After the January
announcement, confusion reigned, with officials at times denying and at other times confirming that exploration and
production assets — including the country’s prized oil wells — would indeed be part of the privatization.

In a follow-up interview with Bloomberg on April 1 (once again bypassing Saudi media outlets), the crown prince tried to
put a shine on the plan, saying the sale would fund a “$2 trillion megafund” as part of an “Economic Vision 2030” to
diversify the economy and make investments the principal source of government revenue instead of oil. The
privatization, it was revealed, would happen as soon as 2017, with an initial o ering of 5 percent of the company’s
stocks.

The thirty-one-year-old deputy crown prince is the Saudi king’s favorite son and has ambitious plans for the country.
But the 2015 collapse in oil prices has left him short on cash. His solution: sell the family silverware.

Ministry of McKinsey

Salman’s plan is not unusual. For decades the world’s most powerful institutions have championed privatization.
Indeed, the Aramco plan seems to have come courtesy of the “Ministry of McKinsey,” as Saudi bureaucrats sarcastically
labelled the world’s most prestigious consulting company.

McKinsey is a relative newcomer in the Gulf, but its meteoric rise in the past decade has rocketed it to the top of the local
consultancy market, just like everywhere else. McKinsey’s path to domination in the Gulf has been a peculiar one,
however.

It has made its mark by creating grand plans — “economic visions” — for each country. These master plans present
countries with a blueprint to transform their entire economies, promising to move them from oil dependency to rich,
“diversified,” “knowledge-based” economies.

Drawing up long-term national economic plans is standard practice in statecraft. But usually such plans are devised by
national technocrats and experts, in conjunction with elected representatives that are supposed to represent the public.
In some unlucky countries in the global south, they are often force-fed such plans as part of “packages” by institutions
such as the World Bank and the IMF.

McKinsey faces no such constraints in the Gulf. The region’s rulers are not particularly beholden to either elected bodies
or the opinions of local technocrats. Instead, they pay billions of dollars to receive the wisdom of global management
consultants (which almost never include locals in their ranks). Saudi Arabia alone shelled out more than a billion dollars
for consultants in 2015.

The testing ground for McKinsey’s “economic vision” business line was the Kingdom of Bahrain. There the company
teamed up with the young and “ambitious” crown prince in the mid-2000s to draw up the “Economic Vision 2030” — a
plan to reform Bahrain into a “competitive” society. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, was ×
next in line for its own Economic Vision 2030.

McKinsey’s made inroads elsewhere. Before Muammar Qaddafi’s fall, the firm was working with the Libyan ruler’s son
— then being touted as a visionary reformer — to reshape the country’s economy. In Egypt, they put together proposals
to improve various sectors and ministries throughout the country. And in Yemen, it came up with ten economic reform
priorities under the patronage of Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president’s son.

If the pattern seems familiar, it is. The company teams up with young heirs to the throne, who are eager to make their
countries’ economies conform to their vision of the future. A less palatable similarity for someone like Prince Salman is
how many of the countries who drank the McKinsey Kool-Aid became epicenters of the Arab Spring. Bahrain, Egypt,
Libya, Yemen — each was convulsed by demonstrations, often animated by economic grievances.

Unlike other firms, McKinsey’s reputation hasn’t su ered from its association with these failed grand plans. It continues
to secure lucrative contracts in the region. In contrast, Monitor, once a highly regarded consultancy firm, had to file for
bankruptcy in the wake of revelations of its relationship with Gaddafi’s government. And a media controversy erupted in
the UK over the London School of Economics’s similar ties.

Indeed, the Gulf is still brimming with consultants of all types. A common joke is that nearly all jobs in state-owned
companies and bureaucracies have been “seconded” (business jargon for “delegated”) to consultants of one form or
another.

Booz & Company — purchased in 2014 by by the accountancy behemoth PricewaterhouseCoopers — had a very close
working relationship with Dubai’s ruling elite. In Qatar, the Rand Corporation implemented a US-style charter school
system, destroying the country’s public school system and accelerating the growth of private school vouchers. (In 2014,
a new emir took over and unceremoniously booted Rand from the country.) And Kuwait paid a multi-million-dollar fee
to a consultancy set up by Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, to sketch out its own economic blueprint.

Expert Rule

In short, every Gulf country has commissioned a global consultancy firm to conjure up an “Economic Vision” to guide
them into a post-oil future.

These economic visions sound remarkably similar: diversify the economy away from oil dependency, and grow the
economy by transforming it into a financial, logistical, and tourist hub. In essence, become Dubai in one form or another.

And the route to success is always through the private sector. In the same interview announcing the Aramco
privatization, the deputy crown prince outlined plans to privatize public infrastructure, education, and even health care.

The infatuation with privatization is particularly bizarre in the Gulf. Here the private sector is mainly composed of
“family-owned” companies in construction, retail, and hospitality that are subsidy-dependent, plagued by low
productivity, and heavily reliant on exploited, poorly paid migrant labor who produce non-exportable services.

In contrast, state-associated companies in the Gulf, whether partially or wholly owned by the government, tend to be
more dynamic, productive, and technologically savvy. They have (relatively) better labor relations and hire more local
workers. And whether involved in oil, logistics, air travel, or sovereign wealth management, they’re among the most
internationally recognized companies the region has to o er.

This does not mean the state-affiliated sector hasn’t seen notable failures — its record is in fact patchy — but in
comparison the “family-owned” private sector is in need of a much stronger dosage of reform.

The focus on privatization comes as no surprise, however, given the nature of the management consultancy business,
whose focus is geared towards financial corporate “value” as the ultimate metric.

McKinsey’s magnum opus: this might be smart strategy from the point of view of corporate shareholders, but it hardly
makes sense when reshaping and running a nation’s economy. In the neoliberal age, however, where a financial value has
to be placed on every object and living being, this does not seem so surprising.
×

Groundhog Day
Yet, while it’s easy to associate the operations of consultants like McKinsey with neoliberalism and financialization, the
Gulf States have been addicted to Western consultants for nearly a century. Indeed, the story of a young, eager
pretender to the throne teaming up with Western experts to “diversify” a Gulf economy away from oil will trigger a
strong sense of déjà vu for followers of the region’s history.

It began with colonial Britain in Bahrain. In 1923, after deposing the local ruler (Sheikh Isa) and replacing him with his
son (Sheikh Hamad), the British brought in an “advisor,” the infamous Charles Belgrave, to help steady the country
under its new leadership.

For thirty years Belgrave e ectively acted as the country’s prime minister, running everything from Bahrain’s finances
to its police system. The British justified their heavy-handedness by trumpeting the economic and material gains the
new rationalized and bureaucratized absolutist system produced.

And there were large material gains. Bahrain’s recently discovered oil, along with the continued rationalization drive —
in which high government posts were given to British officers and members of the ruling family — created considerable
wealth. Bahrain quickly became the neighborhood role model from Britain’s point of view — as did Belgrave. Educated
at Oxford and SOAS, Belgrave personified the kind of colonial adviser the British installed in the early twentieth century
under its system of colonial “indirect rule.”

Kuwait, with oil reserves that made Bahrain’s look like small potatoes, beckoned next. A major general was brought in to
oversee the “Development Department,” and a colonel was parachuted in to control finances.

But Kuwait’s emir was more resistant than Bahrain’s, and — aided by the balance of local and regional forces at the time
— he managed to deny the British ultimate control. Instead, the emir sta ed Kuwait’s local bureaucracy with a mix of
ruling family members, local notables, and technocrats from nearby Arab states, particularly Palestine and Syria.

King Abdulaziz, the first ruler of Saudi Arabia (which unlike every other Arab state was never colonized by the West)
adopted a similar approach. He assembled an eclectic mix of bureaucrats that included Hafez Wahba, the Egyptian
AlNahda reformer, and St John Philby, the British Arabist famed for defecting from British services to work for the king
and converting to Islam.

By the 1950s British colonial administrators were no longer in vogue. This postcolonial period of “encountering
development” brought a new obsession amongst Western states and their allied institutions about the material
improvement of the recently independent “developing countries.” Demand shifted to “development” experts,
particularly from the United States.

At the top of the heap were economists. Instead of colonial administrators, institutions like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund moved in to implement a high-modernist vision of societal reorganization that reflected
what the “al-Khabeer Al-Ajnabi” — the foreign expert — deemed best for the people under the scrutiny of his “bird’s
eye” gaze.

Thus, after a financial crisis brought Saudi Arabia to its knees in 1957, King Saud welcomed consultants from the IMF
and the World Bank to reorganize the monetary and fiscal foundations of the country’s economy. In a similar vein, the
Saudi government commissioned a group of Stanford economists a decade later to devise the country’s first five-year
economic plan (and simultaneously commissioned a Harvard team to evaluate the Stanford team’s work).

The Ford Foundation, the UN, the International Labor Organization, the IMF, the World Bank, and a vast army of
international technocrats regularly filled the planes landing at the Gulf’s newly built airports.

The National Technocrats

But while international advisors were ever-present, the postcolonial years also witnessed the gradual “nationalization”
of state economic planning. The Saudi Kingdom’s “Central Planning Organization,” established in 1968, epitomized
×
this process, but a similar trend was evident across all the Gulf countries.

Ultimate decision-making remained the sole prerogative of the ruling families, but young, idealistic, highly educated
national technocrats — sometimes even former members of revolutionary parties themselves — increasingly found
their way into state institutions.

Indeed, at one point after independence in the 1970s, Bahrain was rumored to have seven ex-Baath party members
heading its various ministries. Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s 1961 cabinet contained a number of Arab nationalists and
leftists. A mix of developmentalism, nationalism, and deference to the royal family prevailed among this new national
technocratic cadre.

The development plans laid out and enacted from the 1960s to the 1980s were radically di erent from the neoliberal
“economic visions” of McKinsey and company today.

Reflecting the zeitgeist of the times, the language of the plans was filled with references to “development,” “the Arab
world,” “regional cooperation,” and “industrialization.” How much of this was reflected in reality is debatable, but it was
markedly di erent from the watchwords of today: “competitiveness,” “growth,” “privatization,” financialization.

Probably the most famous and radical of these technocrats was Abdullah Al-Tariki — or “the Red Sheikh,” as Americans
disdainful of his left-leaning aspirations dubbed him. Al-Tariki was not only a seminal figure in the Saudi and Arab
world, but in the Global South as a whole.

During his 1950s and ’60s stint as Saudi oil minister, he was the main driver with Venezuelan minister Juan Alfonso to
form OPEC. He was also one of the most vocal and powerful proponents of nationalizing oil assets in the developing
world, popularized by his slogan “The oil of the Arabs for the Arabs.”

Back then, Aramco was owned by the American behemoths SoCal, Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil. Al-Tariki paved the way
for national states, rather than multinational oil conglomerates, to control oil production.

American diplomats, multinational oil companies, and reactionaries in the royal family hated Al-Tariki with a passion.
Eventually they teamed up to ensure that he and other progressive colleagues would be fired or sidelined.

After Al-Tariki’s ouster in the early 1960s, Saudi rulers began selecting technocrats that would conform to royal
dictates. National technocrats, while still entrusted with more power than Western consultants, would now steer the
economy with barely a hint of radicalism.

This system was autocratic and unaccountable, committing many of the follies of “high modernism” seen elsewhere in
the world, including white elephant projects such as the disastrous wheat export program that nearly drained the
country of all of its sweetwater reservoirs.

However, it also produced a modern state bureaucracy in the Gulf and a broad welfare state that extended health care,
education, housing, infrastructure, electricity, and running water to the general public. These achievements, often
discarded in many of the Left’s discussions of the period, should be recognized and evaluated alongside the grand
failures of statist developmental planning.

For its part, colonial Britain, its involvement diminished in the northern parts of the Gulf, shifted its focus to the
Southern Gulf, particularly the UAE and Oman.

Within five years, the British had deposed three rulers in the southern Gulf (Sharjah in 1965, Abu Dhabi in 1966, Oman
in 1970). Their reasoning was that these ancien regimes were obsolete in an era of economic modernization. Internal
rule had to be reorganized to cater to “development.”

Bill Du epitomized this modernization. For decades he was the right-hand man to the ruler of Dubai, and “helped
transform Dubai from desert outpost to global megacity.” Meanwhile, in Oman, a legion of “advisers” practically ran the
country after deposing its ruler and replacing him with his son in 1970. The most famous of these advisers was the trinity
of Timothy Ashworth, Tim Landon, and David Bayley — all three of whom had a military background and were
extensively involved in setting up the modern Omani state bureaucracy.

Citizens, Financiers, and Oilers ×

A common thread in all these economic visions — whether developmentalist or neoliberal — is the near-total absence of
participation by citizens themselves. This is not unusual for the Gulf states.
The region’s people su er a double form of disdain: their autocratic rulers consider them unworthy of playing any role in
decision-making, and many around the world, including “progressives,” tend to write them o as denizens of oppressive
rich states. Rarely are they granted any agency.

People in Saudi Arabia are increasingly contesting these warped visions, in no small part due to higher knowledge
accumulation. From 2005 to 2014, enrollment in higher-education institutions skyrocketed from 432,000 to roughly
1.5 million.

In 2014, the number of Saudi students studying abroad reached 130,000 (half of whom are in the US). Nearly 32 percent
of working Saudis have university degrees, comparable to countries in Europe and the United States, and the Saudi
market is the largest and most lucrative book market, by far, in the Arab world.

This increasingly educated population is also increasingly online, vigorously debating national and regional topics in an
unprecedented manner on social media, where traditional state censorship has proven ine ective.

The country has the highest number of active Twitter users in the Arab world: 2.4 million, or more than double the
number in Egypt, a country whose population is three times larger. (Unsurprisingly, millennials — who constitute more
than half of the Saudi population — lead the pack in social media use.)

That’s why the deputy crown prince’s decision to hatch a plan in secret with management consultants and announce it to
the world on Bloomberg was such a big deal. In the past, circumventing local society was expected. But today Saudi
Arabia is an increasingly tuned in, mobilizing society. The question is what form this mobilization will take.

It’s a difficult one to answer because the crown prince’s plan to sell o Aramco was truly shocking. Ever since the oil wells
started flowing in the 1930s, the rulers of Saudi Arabia have been wise enough to give Aramco a wide berth, allowing it to
govern and operate according to its own ethos as long as it continued to be the golden goose that laid the eggs that
sustained the throne.

Moreover, the reliance on Aramco has only grown over time. Since its nationalization in the 1980s, the company has
become the main incubator for a large swath of the kingdom’s technocrats.

It is widely recognized as the most well-run Saudi company, and is the number one destination for top graduates. It has
even been used by the government to implement flagship national projects, including the construction of stadiums, a
$10 billion, state-of-the-art university, and industrial cities.

Indeed, given the pervasive dysfunction exhibited in other governmental ministries, the current focus on reforming the
country’s most efficiently run asset seems particularly puzzling and dangerous.

The latest announcements will be a hard pill to swallow for the technocrats of Aramco. Already some high-profile former
employees have publicly aired their misgivings, an unprecedented act in the kingdom.

Management consultants of the McKinsey variety are rarely welcomed by the employees of any company, and in this
case the causes for hostility and scepticism are magnified tenfold.

The proposals put forward signify the overtaking of Aramco by a trinity of royal family members, management
consultants, and corporate financers. And the logic of the prince’s diversification plan seems to be: sell o oil assets for
cash, invest the cash in the roulette of financial markets. There’s a reason many Aramco technocrats are queasy.

Nor should the plans sit well with the rest of the population. The Gulf States, Saudi Arabia included, are littered with
abandoned “mega-projects” and cities that the finance-management consultancy nexus were the principal architects of,
but which turned out to be colossal failures in the midst of the financial crisis.

Moreover, there is no clear vision as to what exportable industries the kingdom will build up to replace its near-total
dependence on oil and petrochemical industries. Such exportable industries are the ultimate barometer of the health of
any capitalist economy in today’s globalized world. And as the 2007–8 crash made clear, sophisticated financial funds
are no replacement.

The policies as currently outlined, based on the whims of an upstart prince and his legion of western consultants and
financiers, would reverse the most impressive economic achievement in the Arab world in the past half a century,
×
enabled by Al-Tariki and company: the nationalization of a multinational company that controls production from the
world’s largest oil reserves.

The prince and McKinsey seem to believe that selling this national asset in order to gamble in the global financial
markets is a more e ective strategy for economic prosperity.
Let’s hope the people of the land are able to mobilize against this folly.

×
The Value Proposition Canvas

Value Proposition Customer Segment

Gain Creators Gains

Products Customer
& Services Job(s)

Pain Relievers Pains

copyright: Strategyzer AG
The makers of Business Model Generation and Strategyzer strategyzer.com
 EVALUATION

We propose some questions to help in evaluating an artistic project that

includes other people who are not the artists, or in some way relies on its
meaning being generated from the production of social experience. These
terms are used as shorthand to describe work like this: socially engaged art,
participatory, social practices, “relational aesthetics”, or commodified social
experience. Each of these terms carries a set of ethical assumptions and
outwardly expressed value systems. They don’t provide us with an in depth
way of assessing art works. We think the following questions can help in thinking
through the complex interaction of ethics and aesthetics particularly if one
is interested in empowering others or making art work that does not create
abusive power relationships.

Does the work empower more people than just the

authors of the work?

Does the work foster egalitarian relationships,

TEMPORARY SERVICES
access to resources, a shift in thinking, or surplus
for a larger group of people?

Does the work abate competition, abusive power

and class structures, or other barriers typically
found in gallery or museum settings?

Does the work seek broader audiences than just

those educated about and familiar with
contemporary art?

Does the work trigger a collective imagination

that can dream of other possible worlds while it
understands the current one with eyes wide open?

ART & SOCIAL PRACTICE WORKBOOK 1/2

Lucie Kolb
Artists Have The Anwers?

Workshop, 29.–30.10.2021, Vienna & online.

What happens when we bring the practices of artists and consultants into the same
space? Will it be a dance party or a hypocritical brawl?

In late October 2021 we will convene a series of workshops in hybrid form (online +
in Vienna) to explore this possibility. As the influence of consultancy firms and their
methods expand within spheres of the public and policy making, we ask what artists
can critically adapt and appropriate from the interfaces, frameworks, tools, and prac-
tices of the consulting field.

Our line of inquiry follows the developing story of consultancy capitalism, is inspired
by the questions left unanswered by the Services project, and is concerned with
artists developing resilient practices amongst the changing rhetoric of the role of art
in society and the evaluation of its “impact.”

The workshops will create opportunities for discussion and dialogical analysis of
practices, techniques, frameworks, motivations, performativity, and aesthetics, of
critical art and consulting practices.

Where we want to take this

After this first series of workshops, participants will be invited to develop concepts
for performative works that will later be commissioned for a festival of interac-
tion-based projects.

Resultant projects and commissioned works may include

(but are not limited to…):

• works that appropriate and interrogate the performativity of consultancy practic-

es and question ideas of “resiliency,” “impact,” and “sustainability.”
• works based on interactions between individuals and “clients” — communities,
institutions, companies
• works that take a critical perspective on the services and consultancy industries
• artworks that seek to influence the public sphere and public policy beyond the
predetermination of cultural institutions and the market for social practice.
Some of the questions we will collectively consider are: Schedule
29.–30.10.2021 11:00–18:00
• The consultancy industry occupies the interfaces between corporate & gov-
ernmental agents and their impact on the life and experience of society. What Friday 29.10.
if we would open this interface to the intervention of artists by encouraging the 11:00–14:00 Workshop and Discussion with Dr. Sabine Fischer
strategic transfer of methods and practices? 14:00–15:00 Lunch Served at Villa
• Artists are trained with critical tools for thinking and acting as context for their 15:00–18:00 Workshop and Discussion with Robert Strohmaier
practices, yet the work developed through this is often confined by the institu- 18:00 Hangout at Villa, open plan dinner
tions and economies of art, or their practices are reframed as artistic research
by the academic industry. What if we could build a platform for resilient aes- Saturday 30.10.
thetic and knowledge practices that enables more direct forms of impact to the 11:00–14:00 Workshop and Discussion with Georg Russegger
wider fields of society, economy and government? 14:00–15:00 Lunch Served at Villa
• Consultancies are a kind of cybernetic oracle, offering systems of control as 15:00–18:00 Coffee, Cake & Talk. Spontaneous inputs by participants,
services to corporations, governments and individuals. Yet, while the effects concept drafting, discussion, planning, independent work.
of the ongoing implementation of digital systems for control are reflected by 18:00 More talking, dinner and drinks
critical theory and media art, the widespread impact of the field of consultancy
services remains untouched by the critique and intervention by artists. What
would artists do with access to the tools and markets of consultancies, and Location
what would consultancies do with the input by artists? Hybrid Workshop: Zoom & Impact Academy Villa Schapira
• Under the shifting conditions of globalisation and acceleration, daily life ever Max-Emanuel-Straße 17
more takes place on digital corporate messaging and data collection platforms. 1180 Wien
These apps allow for creative, direct interactions. What would change in artists’
economies if we built a cooperative platform that produces a digital interface for Organizers
direct interaction and monetisable performative works, as a dedicated frame for The workshop is organized by Lukas Heistinger, Bernhard Garnicnig and Andrea
artists dual articulation of performative forms of knowledge practices? Steves. Their work under the Artist Project Group label employs performative and
• What does consulting do in the world, and how does it do it? collaborative forms of organization-building to interrogate phenomena of capitalism
• Are you already a consultant? (when/where) through curatorial and artistic methods. This results in works that do not resolve
• What can consultants learn from artists, and how can they think about integrat- ambiguities, but make them aesthetically tangible in their complexity.
ing artists’ practices, skill sets, perspectives into their consultancy projects? www.artistproject.group
• What can artists learn from consultants, and how can they adapt or appropriate
tools, techniques and frameworks from consultant practices in their performa-
tive and interaction-based work? Support
• In the rhetoric of art contributing to society, and the ever growing bureaucratic Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung
lust for evaluating the impact of art and its public funding, what can we critically Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport; Sektion IV -
adopt from other client-relation and performative-knowledge practices? Kunst und Kultur
• What happens when we intersect the interfaces and adapt the methodologies of Impact Academy, A…kademie der bildenden Künste Wien
consultants to address the intransparency of the consultancy industries influ-
ence on public policy and to make work that seeks to influence the political and
public spheres?
• Is it appropriate or useful to describe some relations between artists and institu-
tions “consultative” and resultant activities or projects as “consultancy”?