IC-98
bioproposalwww.socialtoolbox.com
IC-98 (”Iconoclast 1998”) was founded in 1998 as a reaction to the restrictions of academic writing. From the beginning, the group has tried to act as freely as possible, always putting the context and the idea before the medium, and the group-subject before the individual, never minding the barriers between different disciplines (academic, artistic or activist). In practice, the world of contemporary art has proved to be the most flexible environment for diverse projects, being a free zone of experimentation within the society at large. Though the label ART has an enormous power to neutralize any message, and regardless of the fact that art world increasingly resembles the high fashion industry, it nonetheless offers possibilities to put forward ideas without the preconditions of academic work (rules, objectivity), the market (surplus value, capitalist modes of distribution), or activism (the threat of dogmatism). In fact, in IC-98’s idealist-pragmatist programme the projects are labeled art only for strategic reasons – the strategy works as long as the concepts of art do not come to dominate the discourse. The same applies to the individuals working in the group: you call yourself artist, just because it is institutionally convenient, because the very concept of ARTIST is obscure. You are not an academic doing art, nor an artist doing research, nor an activist promoting an idea... Nor are you all combined, that would be preposterous to claim. You are just doing, just writing.
Working methods contain interventions in public spaces, constructing situations and creating social frameworks. The historicity of things, places and phenomena are often in focus, too. Recently, IC-98 has been interested in the questions of social democracy and the scandinavian welfare model. Increasingly, the projects take the form of a book, distributed for free in public places.