Art in Hiding

· Freeportism as a tool of speculation ·

June 29, 2016 3 Comments

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When I first came across the term Freeportism I wondered what it could possibly mean. Finding out made my heart sink. Did someone say curiosity kills the cat? The word was coined by Stefan Heidenreich, Professor at the Art Academy Düsseldorf, and refers to the practice of storing artworks in locations that are free from customs duties and taxes around the world, so called free ports. Millions of artworks. Geneva alone has a storage site that holds up to one million pieces, all in temperature controlled racks, carefully packed in wooden boxes, ready to be shipped to auction. Or not – depending on the current and future market prices.

IMG_4498There are whole empires of these free ports, from Luxembourg to Singapore, allowing art to be un-seen. Why on earth, you might ask? The answer is of course: money. And I am not just talking about hedge funds, derivatives or futures applied to art collection. Rather, art out of view is the perfect way to launder dirty money since there is no transparency.

Hito Steyerl, one of the first to recognize this threat to artists’ self-legislation, wrote: “conditions of possibility are no longer just the elitist “ivory tower,” but also the dictator’s contemporary art foundation, the oligarch’s or weapons manufacturer’s tax-evasion scheme, the hedge fund’s trophy, the art student’s debt bondage, leaked troves of data, aggregate spam, and the product of huge amounts of unpaid “voluntary” labor—all of which results in art’s accumulation in freeport storage spaces and its physical destruction in zones of war or accelerated privatization.”

We have a luxury goods market of a trillion dollars of which art comprises about 5%. Not many people who collect modern art any longer look at the inherent value of a piece – it has become a commodity of speculation, hidden in wooden crates so the market is regulated against flooding. Maybe the only way to see art in the future is on the street….

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Read about it in more detail here: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/freeportism-as-style-and-ideology-part-i-post-internet-and-speculative-realism/ And weep.

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I am inclined to report that I have a freeport of my own that holds my stacked works in fantasies of future buyers: it is called my closet…..

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friderikeheuer@gmail.com

3 Comments

  1. Reply

    Steve Tilden

    June 29, 2016

    Very interesting, Friderike. I’ve come late to this wonderful and complex world; it took me years before I could say out loud ‘I am an artist.’ I’m still a bit unsure. But I have my own version of a ‘Freeport,’ my unsold panels gathering dust in the corner of the south studio. One of these became the base for the green collage, which is inspiring me to see what I might do with more of them.

    I once had a piece stolen, from the stairwell of OHSU School of Nursing. It was a group of Vaux Swifts huddled together on the stone wall as if in the Chapman school chimney. So I figure the Guggenheim has a stolen art department; they hired one of the Watergate burglars when he was released from prison to run it. So I think my swifts piece is at The Guggenheim.

  2. Reply

    Maryellen Read

    June 29, 2016

    ARGHHH
    I had no idea. Freeporting sounds like fodder for a thriller. Nefarious sanctuaries. Anyone oversee this beyond the art stashers?
    Great essays. Thanks

  3. Reply

    Corie Skolnick

    July 2, 2016

    Your closet. Ha! LOL.

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