First co-edited and published by the Center for Plausible Economies (CPE) in 2022, the Penfold Principles summarise our thinking and practices related to interdependent art worlds. Inspired by the 19th-century Rochdale Principles, often referred to as the start of the European co-operativist movement, the Penfold Principles are structured around seven application areas, ranging from governance to aesthetics, and are led by the guiding notion of interdependence. They attempt to summarise and find words for how we want to work with each other (inwards) and towards the bigger aims (outwards).
As often is the case with the Center for Plausible Economies, the manifesto is accompanied by an image, the aim of which is to visually steer our imagination. We picture the principles of interdependent art worlds as seven needles of a compass, which point both outwards - towards society at large - and inwards – to the realm of our everyday practice and self-organization. We designed this compass as a navigational tool to be used by ourselves, our comrades, and our extended art families. People we are close to and communities of which we are part.
As CPE we mainly move within and across art worlds that hover beneath the most visible surface of contemporary art, formed in the guise of the art market and large institutions. In a more-than-human world, we happily work peer-to-peer, often allied with movements struggling for progressive social change. As we reference notions substantial to the theory and practice of feminist economies – such as interdependence, community economies, the commons, and care labor – these principles encapsulate our take on the otherwise complex question of “family values”. While doing so, we challenge how this term has been instrumentalized by conservative and authoritarian ideologues. For example, in Poland the notion of “wartości rodzinne” (i.e. family values) has been often evoked to limit women’s rights, to enshrine patriarchal models of family, to relegate queerness to the margins, and to insist on heteronormativity. A famous credo of Margaret Thatcher that “there is no such thing as society, only individual men and women and their families” underwrote neoliberal and conservative revolutions across the world. Such “family values” are evoked to trample over alternative social and economic orders, and to serve as an ideological cover for ultimately economic interests based on accumulation and extraction rather than interdependence and regenerative justice.
When we talk about family values here, we think about the needles of the interdependent compass suggested by the Penfold Principle, which points towards such notions as the commons, solidarity, equity, labors of love, cultural democracy, stylistic plurality, and radical pragmatism. These values help us to navigate the plethora of self-organized art, interdependent worlds, and myriad artistic ecosystems that we inhabit, cherish, and sustain. Extended art families constitute these art worlds, kinships made of friendships and comraderies forged over years of self-organization. They do not organize around institutional reputations and commercial success. Their plurality of organizational structures and aesthetic idioms contrast with a globalized circulation of contemporary art, which trades on familiarity to establish the commercialized monoculture. The picture of globalized art, offered by large institutions, biennales, fairs, and auction houses alike, is painted in very broad strokes. This perspective tends to be rather limiting, pushing many figures outside of the art family photo, as they do not conform to the globalized norm. In contrast, the art worlds we cherish are stylistically plural; they dissent from being reduced to market-centric art production whereby others decide what is art and what is not.
Fig.1
Self-organized art worlds tend to be open (like a parade) rather than snobby (like a VIP lounge), collaborative (like a social movement) rather than exclusive (like a curatorial cult). They are chatty as a community gathering and friendly. They are fundamentally egalitarian in their indiscriminate belief in the human capacity for organizing social systems that benefit society as a whole instead of those already best off. This provides them a slightly idealistic veneer, without which any culture becomes cynical pulp. The art worlds we enjoy and want are not distinguished by any specific style; they can host an infinite number of artistic formulae. Emerging below curatorial radars, they are as messy as a community kitchen and as varied as a shared meal. They can be compared to a lacustrine district – a complex ecosystem of interconnected lakes, streams, reservoirs, dams, and canals – that does not form a single mainstream that can be captured in a single family photo.
The aesthetics of these art families can deploy forms of radical critique, or the desire to simply make something. Their creations can be things of beauty, a collective luxury that offers joy to their makers as well as users. They are everywhere, being part and parcel of everyday life; they are down to earth, and they operate in the cultural everyday spaces of which they are part. They are made by and enjoyed by many, sometimes as part of a celebration or a protest, sometimes in moments of relaxation and respite. Often, they do not even need to be called art; typically, they offer wider possibilities. The aesthetic needle of this compass is closely aligned with its ethical and political program, where the notion of family values is interpreted through the prism of commons-based, community-affiliated economies. Establishing interdependent economies in the sector of contemporary art is associated with wider efforts at creating more transparent, equal, and just social and economic systems. These efforts are geared against capitalist extraction, in contemporary art and beyond.
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The Penfold Principles were first drafted and edited in public during “Compost” at The Showroom London in 2021. Penfold is the name of the street where they originated. Text by Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder (2022) was first edited together with Seema Manchanda and Lily Hall at The Showroom (2021), and with many others since.
The compass is inspired by the legacy of the Rochdale Principles, a mid-nineteenth-century European co-operativist movement that demanded member rights, democratic control, economic participation, autonomy, self-education, and cooperation in society.
Key terms coined and practiced by collaborators and colleagues include:
Community Economies (Community Economies Institute), Solidarity Economy (art.coop), idt. (The Interdependence), Lumbung (ruangrupa), ideas for a new art world (The White Pube), and Today is Our Tomorrow (PUBLICS).
This contribution is part of the 2024 annual Codes of Conduct on Heritage a series of images to redraw the codes of economic conduct underpinning contemporary art.
- Image Credits:
Cover: Why do we care about art?, co-produced by Kathrin Böhm together with The Showroom London and members from local community and interest groups, mural commission by Lacuna for Paddington Square, London, design: An Endless Supply, 2023
Fig.1 Courtesy of Center for Plausible Economies