In this issue we explore the infrastructures that influence the thinking, production and effects of art. The focus is a thinking of infrastructure as a framework of production, something that artistic practice is formed by but also constantly collaborates with, exceeds and modulates.
In his text “Is the Academy of Fine Arts Worth Debating in 1979?” artist Willy Ørskov briefly mentions his unrealised idea for a so-called “institute for aesthetic planning”. The institute would presumably function as a transdisciplinary state organ, weaving together pressing matters of politics and urban planning with aesthetic practices. His idea points toward a lack, or perhaps more precisely an unexplored potential, stemming from the absence and deficiency of infrastructure. For him, it seems, infrastructural changes could become instigators that alters arts place and function in society.
What Ørskovs perspective opens for is an imaginary of artistic organization that reaches beyond art institutions. This view is one that looks for stronger ties between artistic environments across disciplinary or national borders. It is also one that challenges modern notions of art and non-art, by delimiting the possible connections for channeling resources to include other institutions than traditional cultural ones.
Leading on from this, we could see infrastructure as a productive enabler, producing contexts and practices, and perhaps even new relationships where none existed before. In this issue we look at the intersections of artistic practice and infrastructure. We are trying to think about infrastructure in a way that understands it as key to understanding the limits and potentials of art, seeing it as an integral producer of practice and discourse.