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Editorial
Our Swiss Issue is a field study on art and the art market. It has been made at the introduction of the Kunsthaus Zurich for the exhibition Shifting Identities. It has been some six months in gestation and has involved the efforts of approximately fifty people. We spent four months on fieldwork and collecting material, and two months organising and processing it. We have compiled the magazine as if it were a documentary film: with portraits, various voices and images.There is an Export edition and a Domestic edition, the latter of which is distinguished by its double cover and can be used as an entry ticket for the Kunsthaus Zurich.
We have attempted to understand how the system behind art works, and have looked critically at the role of the market. We have quickly come to understand that the market is effective for only approximately 3 to 5 per cent of artists. But how do you decide who will make it to the top? Nobody is really willing to make a declaration about quality, and many leave this distinction to market forces. It was for this reason that we felt it necessary to look for an other model, a possible alternative way. We had one question that we wished to pose to everyone: do you think the current hierarchical model works? And this usually led to a second question: is it possible to conceive another model?
‘The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.’
In the final pages of her book Hype! Kunst und Markt, Piroschka Dossi uses this quote from Bruce Nauman as an introduction to take the whole matter to a further level, stating: ‘But the art market today sends out another message as well, with the phenomena of speculation and hype taking their toll in the larger context of global social upheaval. The growing gap in prices, the erosion of the centre and the concentration of the market on only a few winners pinpoint a development, as if through a magnifying glass, that may well become a hotspot in the years ahead: the escalation of inequality in our society.’

What Life Could Be by Michael Baers and the artists and editors of Fucking Good Art Rob Hamelijnck and Nienke Terpsma.
A Meta-Comic – a critical graphic essay.

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