Lane Relyea on Distribution Systems
Editors Note: Originally published in Response: Art and the Art of Criticism exhibition catalog, I-Space Gallery (2009).
by Lane Relyea
Like other major business sectors undergoing globalization, the art world over the last 20 years has grown increasingly dispersed and decentered while at the same time achieving ever greater organizational and professional coherence. Since the early 1990s, with the sudden rise of the London and Los Angeles art scenes, and with close to 40 different cities worldwide establishing new international bi- and triennials, the art world no longer resembles a pyramid with one city at its apex. It is now a horizontal matrix. And more than any single city or exhibition or art event, prestige now accrues to the lines between, the routes of distribution and circulation connecting various centers and gatherings.
Likewise, art itself has grown increasingly networked. More and more art practices manifest themselves as codes or programs through which already existing objects, sites and discourses are “repurposed,” the aim being to access and link various databases and platforms (not just those in the art world but beyond, from social acquaintances to research archives to personal libraries to 
pop-culture inventories like old record collections to the intimately biographied yet anonymous cast-offs accumulated in thrift stores). Just as no single TV show or pop song is as hot today as the TiVo boxes and iPods that manage their organization, so too with art it’s the ease and agility of access and navigation through and across data fields and sites and projects that takes precedence over any singular, lone objet. The sovereign, self-centered, self-anchored object or artist subject or art site or show or art center is no longer what exudes aura; rather it’s the ability to shuttle along the pathways, to partake of the network’s scaffolding of spokes and nodes, that incites real competition.
All this goes for criticism as well. Take Artforum. In 1993 the magazine introduced as part of its monthly format a “contributors page” immediately following the table of contents. Not only does the page personalize the month’s articles, tying each to a singular and unique origin, but it also opens those articles out by using the authors—or rather their 100-word blurbs, the bureaucratic CV written out in prose—as a sort of hyperlink to myriad other professionals, publishers, institutions and projects. To the twin developments of growing dispersion and anonymity on the one hand and increased interconnectedness on the other, the contributors page responds with a standardized professional form of written introduction and disclosure and, on the other, a heightened sense of direct address and personalization gained through the accompanying thumbnail head-shot of the author’s face. Other innovations in the magazine, like increased use of roundtable discussions and multi-authored features, represent, over and above the specific topics being addressed, the connectedness and “liveness” of communicational interface. Art writing today is being replaced by something closer to talk, which is more exteriorized and socialized, addressed and about transmission. Through such tendencies the art press begins to loosen its allegiance to an older print culture and the techniques of silent reading, crucial to ideas of individual autonomy and interiority, of critical distance and thinking as an isolated, independent act, and instead aligns itself more with the practices and effects of user interface and instantaneous electronic communications.
The ubiquitous square of ARTFORUM
Also, whereas up until the late ’80s Artforum refused to run anything but art ads, limiting the few product advertisements that were accepted to the very back of the magazine, over the course of the ’90s more and more product advertising appears—for clothes, liquor, mints, eyeglasses, restaurants, bars, airlines, hotels, even financial services—and these get placed up front, interspersed with the gallery announcements. And whereas formerly the ad section and the editorial content had been strictly segregated, now they co-mingle, alternating page to page. This mingling helps to disarticulate and fragment the editorial content and allows for more flexibility and diversification, as short “think pieces” by intellectual-columnists are now interrupted by upcoming exhibition “previews” and various types of news reporting—on art institutions and their intertwined affairs, on the comings and goings of curators, etc. There are more lists (“Hot List,” “Top Ten”) which function as straightforward information, underlining the ability of the magazine to serve as a database. Many of the new sections in Artforum (“Openings,” “Thousand Words,” “Top Ten,” etc.) also appear regularly, punctually. Which means that, not only does the magazine take on a broader, more diverse institutional art system as its subject matter, but the magazine itself, as it becomes more diverse, more disarticulated and fragmented, also becomes more systematized, more templated, accommodating only those changes in content that don’t exceed its structure’s built-in flexibilities. And finally there is more emphasis on practical information, on news and the art world’s general functionality, which makes the magazine more a resource and guide and less a venue for criticism. It could be argued that this is indicative of a larger tension in art today— between an emphasis on practice and practicality on the one hand, on the everyday and design and even activism, and the supposed continuing need on the other hand for criticism with its refusals and negativity and its tearing things down. The annual “best and worst” section in Artforum, introduced in 1994, had the “worst” half permanently deleted only three years later, in ’97.
