Reduce Art Flights

The website for Reduce Art Flights, a project by Gustav Metzger, recently went live with an introduction, mp3 interview and email list signup. It's a simple site with a broad goal: reducing the art world's ferocious surge of capitalism and subsequent use of airplane travel. The project was first realized at Sculpture Projects Münster in 2007 as a leaflet based on a WWII Royal Air Force poster that detailed the bombing of Germany. Here's a quote from the site that says the project is part of Metzger's...

‘ongoing and endless opposition to capitalism’ and his ‘objection to the massive commercial growth of the art industry’ exemplified by the unprecedented art tourism of the 2007 ‘Grand Tour’ (the coincidence of the 52nd Venice Biennial; the five-yearly Documenta 12, Kassel; and the once-a-decade Sculpture Projects Münster itself).

In the audio interview, Metzger talks about the rising numbers of commercial galleries and increasing amount of advertising in magazines such as Artforum. (As a side note, Artforum editor Tim Griffin addressed the idea of "Adforum" in his March 2008 column.)

Metzger does not claim the project as a work of art, or even an idea which he has control over. Instead, he suggests that "the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra of environmentalism be transformed and integrated into a more radical spectrum of consideration of humanity’s destructive potential." Here's another quote from the website:

With full cognisance that it is ‘a drop in the ocean’, the RAF ‘manifesto’ nevertheless invites voluntary abandonment – a fundamental, personal, bodily rejection of technological instrumentalization and a vehement refusal to participate in the mobility increasingly endemic to the globalized art system.

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I'm aware that flying all over the world is not the best thing for the environment, but to be honest, my airplane travel is limited more by economics than morals. Still, I applaud Metzger for suggesting that maybe it's not so good to be flying all over the world for art fairs and biennials. It's a weird moment that we live in though, and I fully expect that subsequent generations will have fewer travel opportunities than I do simply because of higher energy costs. That could help nudge international art experiences away from the opening up it has now (I'm thinking of a few friends of limited means who scraped together money for a ticket to Europe last summer) and return it fully to an upper class experience. That would also be a sad development.

For more on Reduce Art Flights, click here.