> Do you have enough time? 

I never have enough time - neither for my artistic work nor
for my paid labor. If with enough adequate time is meant,
I always lack adequate time to work out my projects more exactly
and to deepen them up to that point which would be ordinarily necessary
for a discursive practise. But I never reach this "maximum", discursive
point, unfortunately, in my work.


> How do you use free time?
> How does your free time (should you have it) affect your (artistic) work? 


It would have to be defined first what is meant with
spare time. If that time is meant which - we take care here on
Adorno - in the cultural industry distinguishes us from the
production and catches us up in the consumption as work again, then only
the work on the after-images (Adorno) of the working process
would remain. (1)
For me paid labor and spare time therefore cannot be separated. The
new rags proletariat (Lazzarato)(2) just distinguishes itself by the
fact that it works permanently and therefore spare time or amusement
(Adorno) has become a lengthening of the work in the postfordism. even
if for the rags proletariat it is no longer characteristically to escape
from mechanical working processes today, nevertheless, it knows the/to
escape from flexibility. If one reads for instance the life concepts
from minusvisionen (3), it reveals that there can be no more spare
time as an alternative concept. an alternative would signify that one
plays out of the league, thus  - completely with Bourdieu -
question the rules of the game (4) in the field of work and art
field, i.e. to discourse about the rules consciously and to cause its
own exclusion over and over again.
Spare time indicates for me to use that time span beyond
the precarious wage employer-employee relationship and to play
me out of the league. Nevertheless, I am conscious about that
even I cannot escape of the manufacture of the happiness in my
spare time.


> How does prescribed idleness and allowed idleness affect you?

It is doubtful whether there is a real difference today between
prescribed and allowed idleness. One of the catchwords of
postfordism is customizing which rolls up and realizes Adornos
prediction that everything in the relation of work and spare time
strikes itself with simularity and is therefore actually no
more separable: Be a subject and have individual wishes as a
permanent form of the customizing concept has grasped meanwhile
the area of paid labor. To paraphrase couplands generation x (5):
But a part of you is also in the shopping cart.
The sweet idleness in times of the prescribed and allowed full
employment - as for example in ray bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 -
shows exactly that small "divergence" of the norm in which an
involuntary bale of the fist is already enough signal for the
mechanical dog (6). In other times one thought that the bending of the
thumb was a possibility to carry the whole world on its hilltop.
Prescribed as well as allowed idleness would be after Warhol a slip
hole from the lifelong slavery in which the life with birth has sold us:
always with a look at the melancholy pointer. Every form of idleness has
a boredom effect on me. Both are more or less in the shopping cart. At
the checkout I put back again one or other. ;-)


> Marcel Duchamp, perhaps the greatest avant-garde artist of the last
> century stoppend working as an artist in 1912. This fact had an enormous
> influence on modern art. On 11 November 1964 Joseph Beuys actually
> dedicated a complete art-action called “The silence of Marcel Duchamp is
> overrated” to this refuse to work.
> How do you explain this enormous effect Duchamp´s ´not-work´ had? And
> what do you think about it? 


Now I could go forward simply that I allow to "starve" this question
so to speak "in the extended arm" and answer with a paroli of Jörg
Immendorf that the "talking of Beuys is overrated " (immendorf -
"treffen zu ehren des dogmatischen bildes" (1989)). But I will ignore
this stalemate.
From 1912 on Duchamp stopped working as a painter - this is to be
understood a little more subtly than to stop working "artistically". If
there must be a before and afterwards, one could say, Duchamp stopped
working as a painter in the artistic field and begun on developing
concepts and projects in non-archived (boris groys) (7)
fields. Besides, I am not so interested in the reception of this
(artistic) "silence" as a line of the turning away from the retinal
art (which was developed among sol le witt). But that Duchamps
turning away from the Paris art world was barely followed up
argumentative is interesting: Duchamp argues with Bourdieu if he
emphasizes his deliberate turning away from the rules of the
artistic field - he makes clear his loathing at the rivaling parties and
concepts. (8)
He speaks unambiguously from the art-play which
functioned in New York in the 30th already like a stock market
flotation: "Painters and paintings go up and down like stocks." Duchamp
never had itself completely dismissed from the art-play, he
proceeded always for a short time in the field and then completely moved
back again. In non-archived fields he observed the rules
very well, it is in his wage working as a librarian or in his chess
passion. (Note on the edge: the description of Duchamps distant chess
tournaments around 1935 reminds me strongly of the early Internet)
Duchamp never stopped working as an artist, but in the field of the
painting there was no possible space (Bourdieu) left for him; it
had reached a degree of autonomy (possibly with the cubists) and
saturation (market) which could lead only to the abandonment of the
field or to the unlimited recognition of the rules - Duchamps comparison
of the cubists with three monkeys which perceive nothing more beyond
their autonomy, leads the ready made almost compellingly in
the archive (Boris Groys) .

> In an recent essay Lev Manovich states that since the end of 1960s,
> modern art has far more become a conceptual activity and less a question
> of “medium” or “techniques” (thus, for exemple he assigns software-art
> to craft).
> That means art could easily be considered as part of the “vita
> contemplativa” - the contemplative life - and could be referred to as
> (perhaps last) counterdraft to the “active” spectacle of the global
> capitalism. What do you think about that?

Do not call it art from Lev Manovich was a direct reaction to a
certain exhibit and discourse situation of the Ars Electronica in 2003.
As a countermove to several other exhibits which had software art
within the program - on the Ars in 2003 software art was not
really positioned in the art field - its role in the artistic field not
issued. Manovich worked against this missing discourse by leaving its
place in the art field empty and relate it to computer science.
For him software art is not an art craft (unless, one would
define computer science as an art craft), but ranks as science
which distinguishes itself by compiling of prototypes and demos. This
positioning released intense reactions in the scene because Manovich
denied that software art is art and the content, conceptual part
remained disregarded (unless, one would define demo or prototype as
concept).
The content back connection from software art (ditto: net art
and similar) to concept art was, actually, an auxiliary construction to
limit the new relations with regard to the artistic field.
It is only possible to draw a line from Duchamps ready made
and his turning to the idea of the art work (and his refusal
of retinal in art; an interpretation of his silence too - the
perception mostly decisive one), about sol le witts paragraphs on
conceptual art of (1967) and its refusal of perceptual art
which leads to a overproportionality of concept and idea. This line is
often related to dematerialization.
Nevertheless a not perishable (reception-) line can be pursued only
about the refusal of the retinal. software art and net.art
as well as conceptual art avoid the sensation of the eye,
but work - as Florian Cramer (9) fixed very well - in contrast to
conceptual art, nevertheless, not on dematerialization, but at
the unclean, bug-steady places of the digital (the digital in itself is
not identical to dematerialization). In this respect the comparison is
no more than a comparison which ends where conceptual art has
ended up - in the big galleries (1997 Baumgaertel still prophesied that
this will not happen to net art), and fails because of the fact that the
concept does not work independent of the dispositiv (technology/medium)
and reproduces basically again relations and positionings
(Adorno).


> There is a coincidence between art and free software. As a rule, except
> appreciation both do not gain much money and are commercially exploited.
> For free software this is allowed and desired but not for art. What do
> you think: Will the free-software-model increasingly become valid for
> art too (that means we will have complete cross-subsidizing and
> self-exploiting). 



The use of bag soups should make us uncertain or whose chicken and whose
egg we sell! Today the model of the artist enriched in social capital or
artistic networks is quite often given as a prototype which can
be found again fon the Internet as a working-class aristocracy:
very well paid-up, autonomous, adaptable time workers who know the risk
of their position.
The hyperexploitation works just on this precarious border
between profit and loss. As long as both keep the scales, the system
works well and the illusion of freedom remains straight. If one thinks
with Lazzarato these constantly surplus producing structures of
immaterial work to an end for the area of free software. It works just
because it motivates the worker for the work inside (the capital)
as well as for outside (for the recognition in the subculture) -
as a deliberate strategy. To send out the intellectual
proletariat beyond the corporate borders to integrate this temporary
exchange later again fertile into the corporation - quasi a
professional recurving (Douglas Coupland). corporations as well
as art work therefore in parallel on the participation of
immediate present. In this respect the role of art to transfer present
must be reconsidered again and again. If possible at all only Lovinks
radical pragmatism suggested in tactical media remains
effective: the crucial 5 minutes edge or lead in the different formats
of the network (10).

> Only a few artists make a good living - despite supposed highest
> appreciation. Doesn’t society owe them at least paid leave? 


Paid-up vacation or - rest spaces are realized for a long time by the
model of artistic funds, prizes and scholarships. If live well means to
earn a living, then the percentage would unambiguously increase. I find Duchamps
consequence in this regard very sympathetically to work only so much that earn a
living. I would distance myself from these subsidy enclaves and only speak about
models, which agree to a basic income for all (cf national dividend in GB
or the existence money-discussions since the 80s in Germany) (11).

--
1 horkheimer, max/theodor w. adorno: dialektik der aufklärung,
fischer 1990

2 lazzarato, maurizio: immaterielle arbeit,
http://projekte.snm-hgkz.ch/1998/karin/8/media-culture/lazzarato_imm_arbeit1.htm

3 niermann, ingo: minusvisionen, suhrkamp 2003

4 bourdieu, pierre: die regeln der kunst, suhrkamp 2001

5 coupland, douglas: generation x, goldmann 1991

6 bradbury, ray: fahrenheit 451, heyne 2000

7 groys, boris: unter verdacht, hanser 2000

8 duchamp links: tomkins, calvin: marcel duchamp, hanser 1999
and berswordt-walrabe, kornelia (hg.): marcel duchamp.
respirateur, 1995

9 cramer, florian: zehn thesen zur softwarekunst
http://www.netzliteratur.net/cramer/thesen_softwarekunst.html

10 lovink, geert: dark fiber, bpb 2003

11 vgl. dazu negri, toni: arbeit und einkommen,
http://www.wildcat-www.de/zirkular/45/z45negri.htm,
on the german discussion: http://www.existenzgeld.de
and http://www.grundeinkommen.de