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The Penacho Code created and presented The Game of Value to demonstrate how value in art is what we make of it. These notes explain why we made certain choices in our use of artifacts, conventions, etc.
Forum of Games. Was the presentation a game, a Cabaret, or a performance? And, why was it chosen that way? Some thoughts on this are written in Games and Art -- a Theory?
Mechanics. The game is divided into 3 phases, being the team building, the game proper, and the awards ceremony. The listed mechanics of these phases are described in the game notes. This section more concentrates on the why rather than the how.
In order to establish our teams, necessary for the game proper, The Penacho Code needed to bring artists into a strong commercial frame of mine, and separate them into teams. The commercial messages were created by means of three mechanisms: a contract, an auction, and money.
Contracts direct our thoughts to value. If art has value, then art is business, or at least enters into the world of business. Whatever our thoughts about this nexus, it is obvious that at least the trading of art and the expression of prices is within the general world of offers and acceptances, negotiations and auctions, marketing and publicity.
Which leads to their language: contracts. We might suspect that a contract for art ruins the art, or we might say that the contract focusses the mind on the grasp that business has on art. Either way we cannot escape, if we desire to turn art into some form of value.
Contracts in Farce The Penacho Code contract derived from the world's worst contracts. For this, we had ample support from Britain's Plain English campaign, in the form of their annual Golden Bull award. This competition awards a prestigious anti-prize to the worst gobbldegook found in contracts.
Many of the clauses are published, and it was a job of a night and a few beers to read through all of them and select out some of the choiciest and rewrite them slightly to our purpose. These contracts knew no shame, and neither does art; on our way to writing a truly unreadable, unintelligible contract, we did not bother to reward the original authors with a reference.
The contract in farce draws from some other references:
Contracts in Reality. But then, more timid minds asserted. Do we need grants of copyright? Do we need to advise rights? Are our participants voluntary? Of sound body and mind?
Wooses! This cowardly call for some form of formal disclaimer and protection created a legal dilemma. Mixing important terms into a nonsense contract risks confusion. Having two contracts likewise causes the same confusion.
Expectations and customs came to our rescue. In Cabaret and in Mexico, both, such a sense of needing a contract, formal terms of agreement, are not strong. Indeed, the local Cabaret artists thought it nonsensical.
The solution then was to write these few "important" points in an aggressive Cabaret format. These can be found squeezed into the first paragraphs. Although farcical, they should also be clear to any reader of English, at least. And they should also have preserved the spirit of Cabaret.
Fraud! Another curious aspect of the market for art is that it is basically a fraud. Who is defrauded, why, when, and by whom is beyond the scope of today's discussion, but it does raise a really beautiful dilemma.
Consider how fraud makes its way into the game. When we expose the fraud, in the game, are we defrauding our participants? Indeed, in the sense of Santiago Sierra, are we deliberately injecting the fraud into the system, in order to expose it?
At its definition, fraud is (a) in intent to deceive, (b) reliance on statements made, and (c) damages. We certainly intend to deceive, and we have deception in bucket-loads. We want our participants to rely, and as we charged them at the door, there are at least minimal damages.
Further, it's a crime! The Penacho Code's Value of Art game may then be a slam-dunk for a guilty verdict on fraud. In some sense, we could successfully present our game of art fraud and be sued or prosecuted for our success. The dilemma, then, is not that we are deceiving our participants -- that's what we intend -- but that the more successful we are, the more illegal we become, and the more we are sued. Groovy!
One way out of this is dilemma is to declare the fraud. I claim that if we declare that we intend to deceive, then we are not deceiving. Even if we succeed to deceive, we have not deceived, we've simply presented an open deception, and our victim has willingly accepted it according to his own free, knowing, adult choice. The deception is his alone, and he defrauds himself.
This claim may have dubious legal value. However it has some history, if not precedence. It turns out that Ponzi schemes, Pyramids and the like have made the claim into a good practical defence. Authorities have not found it easy to close down Ponzi schemes, and there is widespread recognition (in the US at least) that if the Ponzi scheme advises up front that you will lose all your money then it becomes even more difficult to bring the perpetrators to what civilised outsiders would term as justice.
Why does this work? Why is it that Ponzis can continue to successfully defraud, even when they declare themselves up-front? The answer is non-obvious to those outside Ponzis: it is that the victims of the Ponzis generally know up front that it is a Ponzi, and thus a fraud. Already! So the disclaimer is not news to them.
And, the same applies to Art. The Penacho Code leaps forth and tells the artist world that we will defraud you! The artists do not care, they already know the world of art is fraud. What they don't know is where the fraud is, or how to get some of it for themselves. In truth, as long as we deliver some fraudulent value to them, artists will be happy. It's when we don't deliver the value promised of fraud that we have a problem. In art, it's ok to be a fraud, but not a fraud and a fake.
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Contracting for Fraud. In the event at El Vicio, we handed out contracts in tiny print to all participants before the game proper (phase 2) started. We also went one step further: An A4 contract was printed in the center of an A3 "doble-carta" page, and a further certificate of value was carefully taped over the contract, so the contract itself was not visible.
Our Valuator on the Gate, Lourdes Meraz, was instructed to ask the participants to sign the clear border around the pasted certificate, as this was, we said, "a special certificate for the Consular Attache..." Shortly thereafter, it became "for the Ambassador," and then "for the President..." Then, as the Game started, the contract with unknowing signatures was revealed.
Hoisted on our own Petard. Curiously, the deceptions and intentions with contracts were not widely understood. This may be because, in Mexico, in Cabaret, in Art (one, two or all three) the contract as mechanism of control lacks punch.
A lighter reading of the Auction experience is found in Team Art.
Explanation. The first phase has as its objective the creation of several teams, from uncertain beginnings. Team construction is done by auction. To bootstrap, a few early participants are designated as team leaders, briefed, and given a handful of feather money.
As each partipant became available, he or she was passed onto stage for auction. The team leaders then bid for the new participants, paying in feathers.
Motives. There are several motives behind this novel phase. Firstly, we have to build teams, and we need a technical mechanism to do that. We also have to build them as soon as possible (see second motive, below), and we have to deal with a steady trickle of participants, a priori unknown to us. Some form of apparently random or unbiased distribution is needed, and an auction meets these requirements, at least approximately.
Secondly, the auction powerfully assisted the process of team building. People that we pay for, as in employees, slaves or other material possessions, are actually more valuable to us than those we find casually on the street. "We paid 4 feathers!" is a solid indication of value, of cost, of sacrifice. We might expect that such symbols of slavery demeans and devalues people, but in the perversity of the Penacho Code, it forces recognition of the value, and thus raises the value of the participants. Maybe this was only a short-term effect, but it was sufficient to meld teams, to bring them together, to encourage open and participative working amongst strangers, and this was precisely the problem we wanted solved. Teams that purchased new artists with valuable feather money were encouraged to make good use of their new possessions, and that meant working with them, respecting them, and integrating them into the team.
Thirdly, it makes a comment on the world of art. Could artists be bought and sold, like football stars? Are they traded, behind the scenes, or should they be, in the public eye? Maybe, the artistic career is akin to buying and selling, and even, it would be fairer, more transparent, if buyers and sellers were to trade their favourite artists for money, in open exchange, rather than in the shadow market for gossip, critique and slander?
The comments on teams are not well developed in the show, almost no more than glanced upon, and perhaps always will be no more than a subplot; the world of art is primarily a world of individualism, and groupwork and cooperation has yet to establish its place. Still, the auction allowed us to challenge these unrepentent individuals by selling them off for a handful of feathers. By injecting signals of corruption, manipulation, and bias, the auctioneer also set the scene for later vagueries in judging and scoring. Despite these best efforts, the auction showed that team work can emerge from open processes, where the obvious and open properties of the auction process bonded the team more than it weakened it.
The feather money derives directly from an earlier project, flower money. This innovation in turn derived from an interchange between money as contracts, contracts as individual expressionism, and token money as art challenge. Flower money was the expression of taking a pressed flower and laminating it, in a performance stretching over the seasons. These laminated tokens could then be used for favours, amongst other experimental performances.
Switching to feathers was a natural extension for us, given the theme of the penacho. What was trickier, and is always a difficult challenge with money, was establishing the value for the tokens in a very short time. This was achieved with enourmous success during the game with the process of the auction. Teams needed to build, and they had feather money to do it.
Naturally, they needed more tokens, and fought to get them, so much so that when the auctioneer forgot to collect the payments, other teams were quick to remind. Many items were traded to get more feathers, including electronics (cellphone and USB memory stick), clothing (belt, jacket, designer ring) and sexual favours. Prices rose and fell, inflation was observed, and theft and deception were attempted.
All of which results in strong evidence that value was established. In concert with the auction, the feather money further set the scene for the commercialism and exploitation of the artists and their art in the next phase.
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The game consists of rounds, alternating between questions and tasks.
The first round was a task to create a plastic artwork. In this round, each table was given a bag of children's handicrafts: glue, tape, sticks, paper, pipe-cleaners, etc. Tables had an unknown amount of time to create a work of art.
Motives in Handicrafts. Art can be extremely simple or extremely complex, but the best art is that made of simple things, where the construction is obvious, but the message and meaning are not. In this, the artist was challenged to use familiar but long forgotten tools of great simplicity. It is also worth mentioning that these tools levelled the playing field by reducing the artwork to a more abstract expression.
Further, is what we can do with these toys any more or less art? Could we do better with children? Can decades of learning and experience show themselves in an improved artwork? Taking artists back to childhood was both a comment on the seriousness and frivolity of our purpose.
This round succeeded beyond expectations, even to the extent that some artists were annoyed at frequent demands from the other rounds to pay attention.
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Each group had a question to answer. Each question was carefully chosen to reveal the dark side of the world of art. None of the normal stereotypes were stressed, rather they were abused.
A series of three anecdotes were presented, chosen to test the integrity and analytic skills of the artists. For the artists this was a chance to thump the table. Arguments emerged, positions were taken and defended, and a good time was had by all. Unfortunately for all, artists, judges and MC alike failed to record a clear answer, and results were a total confusion.
Similar to the plastic arts challenge, groups were each given a bag of simple musical instruments, selected from local market puestos: whistles, pipes, drums, tamborines, balloons, sticks, etc. Each table was then given 2 minutes to create a 30 second symphony, which groups performed one after the other.
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Some signs of inspiration burst forth, and for the most part, this stressed the need for the teams to work together in a short space of time.
Judging was done by two members of The Penacho Code, located high up in the back of the stage. This was intentional, to present the judges as up in the clouds, above the rest of humanity. The judges generated a series of judgements and points that were displayed as numbers, and on a graph.
It was not easy for the audience and the players to relate their actions to the points seen, and this also was intentional. Scoring in "the grand game of real art" is based on vague, subjective, hidden and often simply irrelevant criteria, and it is The Penacho Code's mission to play with this disconnect, and ultimately reveal the fraud.
In the event, this was easy. The judges could not follow or hear much of the proceedings, perched as they were far up in the clouds. Scoring resulted on the loosest of criteria. Although artistic merit was taken into consideration, so were a wide range of other things, all of which formed part of The Penacho Code's research into value in art.
One might think that the distance between effort and reward would cause rejection, even when thrust so clearly into the faces of the artists. Yet, it seems that the artists know this, in principle, and expect it in the event. The detailed presentation by points and graphs changed little, and artists fought on, round by round. The team with the largest number of points at the end was ecstatic, and demanded that their certificates recorded their win.
In the end, the points were revealed as a shameless fraud. The judges announced their intention to award the special grand prize to a single person, and paid no attention to the winning team.
Why are there so many artists, yet so few successful artists, we asked? The answer lies in the need to filter out the chosen few from such a large base of artists, the few that can be raised to the dizzy heights of success. As we have no objective predictor of art success, we need to show a large base of artists who did not make it, were cast away in the process, and therefore prove the quality of the raised artist.
You all slave for the one, to be cast aside mercilessly. And, we say, you want to do it, you devote your entire life to be the ones left behind, indeed, you signed the contract to enter the game.
So it is only fitting that at the moment of most excitement, The Penacho Code raises one to the exalted position of Grand Winner of the Game Of Value and discades the rest, 19 artists to be trampled into the ground.
The choice of the grand prize was the yang to the above yin. The lucky artist who is elevated also discovers that the elevation is a cutting from the womb, the rejection of the now collectively minded artists, a ritual ostracising by jealous masses.
The winner, Pancho Lopez, was covered with a poncho of plastic which was then painted with glue, and covered by all the game players with feathers. This stylised tarring and feathering ceremony was both tactile, colourful and poignant. The lucky winner was surrounded by all the players and covered, slowly and lovingly, in a chaotic party celebration.
Why does the successful artist so leave behind the collective of the many? Is it because he or she has escaped, or is it because of rejection? Is the separation so necessary, can we change this, or is it a necessary result of the market for art?
The winner was awarded a special, handwritten certificate on hand-made paper, declaring his value to be raised by The Penacho Code. Players were also awarded a certificate with the same text. Each was signed by the members, and embossed with the formal seal of The Penacho Code.
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Its significance beyond a great document is perhaps in the realisation that life may not be worth living unless the product of ones life - value - is protected from arbitrary seizure. In 1215, the Barons of Great Britain went to civil war to secure their properties from the Monarch, as well as those of other freemen, to varying amounts.
Brief digression on economics: Later writings (Adam Smith, etc) assumed that value should be protected from arbitrary seizure because this was the only way to encourage the full inventiveness and productivity of man. Indeed, although outside the scope of the Penacho Code's investigation, it is worth pointing out that while the principle may be accepted, we still fight on: E.g., 1. The Berlin Wall fell in 1990. 2. Hernando de Soto's famously comments in his 2003 book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else that the key difference is the strength or absence of property rights.
Getting back to art: why would art be different? Of course, value gained from art should be protected from arbitrary seizure, but in conventional terms that just means protection from theft or expropriation.
Instead, consider that, if the value of art is created in an arbitrary and pernicious fashion, is this not a breach of the principles of the Magna Carta? If we can identify and isolate this pernicious method of creation, does the Magna Carta call on us to go to war against the forces of arbitrary value? Should we protect artists themselves from the way value is created, perhaps by dismantling the Art Monarchy now in place?
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On the Farcical: In the text of the certificate, we glorify the monarch, as does the Magna Carta. Is this right? Clearly this is farce, but it also speaks to the frustration of many artists who believe that someone sets the value.
Curators set the value? Or is it the collectors? The galleries? If so, why can't we? What can't the self-titled "Knight Commander of all her Known Imaginations" be one of those who set the value?
The Seal of The Penacho Code is circular with top and bottom phrases and central graphic. Primary phrase is 'The Penacho Code' as top line. Secondary phrase is 'We Raise The Value' as bottom line. Graphical logo is two crossed flowers (design by Asia Sumyk).
An embossing or seal is an old device that adds gravity. Its importance is partly ceremonial, and partly declarative.
Usage of Seals. The seal offers more legal validity over say a hand signature. Firstly, it offers itself as an important signal, one that is less prone to misunderstanding. In the English Common Law, a contract made "under seal" is stronger in that no consideration (money) need be paid. Secondly, it raises a barrier to forgery, as a forger needs to physically make the artifact, and the presence of same is a clear evidence of intent.
Usage is rare in today's world. In the anglo world, it is mostly relegated to a sales item for small companies, due to its cumbersome nature. In the Latino world, the seal is still sometimes used in government departments for official documents. In the Asian world, a chop has been widely used by trading houses in the past, but is more familiar on Asian scroll art.
Why, then? Firstly, the seal is an artifact. It adds value, it is value. The value of the result is always derived from the sum of the parts. In the primary market for art, works are priced according to the square centimeter, and this is analogous to raising our surface area.
Secondly, the seal adds certainty to the message. From signalling theory, we signal confidence in our result with the seal. The result is from elsewhere, but is reinforced here, with the seal.
Thirdly, the seal, like the hand signature, is a performance. Combining all these elements -- certificate, signature, witnesses, seal -- into a ceremony is part and parcel of raising the value. We therefore blur the demarcation between the ceremony as celebration of the raising of the Value, or as necessary part of the raising.
Many slogans were discussed, but eventually we settled on:
W e R a i s e T h e V a l u e
Because that is what we do. That is the result, the end-message of our journey. On that, we succeed or fail, and so does art.
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We discussed many alternatives that celebrated decoding of the value. This was the sense of 'code' in The Penacho Code. Is there a code? A secret handshake, or a shared understanding in an inner sanctum of the councils of high art? Do a small group of powerful critics and buyers have their own control mechanisms, communicated via codes? Is there a lever by which we can open these controls?