The Conspiracy of Art : manifestos, texts, Interviews

Provocation The Conspiracy of Art A Conjuration of Imbeciles In the Kingdom of the Blind... Controversy Starting from Andy Warhol Art Between Utopia and Anticipation No Nostalgia for Old Aesthetic Values La Commedia dell´Arte Too Much is Too Much Illusions Art Contemporary... of Itself Towards the Vanishing Point of Art Aesthetic Illusion and Disillusion Implosions The Implosion of Beaubourg The Violence of Indifference Viral Economy Radical Thought Reality-Shows Dust Breeding Telemorphosis The Matrix revisited War Porn Imaginary Solutions Pataphysics Forget Artaud (Jean Baudrillard / Sylvere Lotringer)
In The Conspiracy of Art, Baudrillard questions the privilege attached to art by its practitioners. Art has lost all desire for illusion: feeding back endlessly into itself, it has turned its own vanishment into an art unto itself. Far from lamenting the "end of art," Baudrillard celebrates art´s new function within the process of insider-trading. Spiraling from aesthetic nullity to commercial frenzy, art has become transaesthetic, like society as a whole.
The images from Abu Ghraib are as murderous for America as those of the World Trade Center in flames. The whole West is contained in the burst of sadistic laughter of the American soldiers, as it is behind the construction of the Israeli wall. This is where the truth of these images lies. Truth, but not veracity. As virtual as the war itself, their specific violence adds to the specific violence of the war.