Sonja Lavaert and Pascal Gielen

The Dismeasure of Art

An interview with Paolo Virno
In his home town Rome, Italian
philosopher Paolo Virno talks with
philosopher Sonja Lavaert and
sociologist Pascal Gielen about
the relation between creativity
and todays economics, and about
exploitation and possible forms
of resistance. Virno is known for
his analysis of post-Fordism; his
view that the disproportion of
artistic standards runs parallel to
communism, however, is new to
the philosophy of art. He believes
aesthetics and social resistance
meet in a quest for new forms.
Political art or not, the contents
hardly matter.
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The art world has displayed an avid interest in your work over
the past few years; we ourselves are here to interview you for
an art magazine. Yet youve hardly written anything explicitly
about art. Where do you think this interest in your work comes
from?
Its true. I sometimes get invited to talk about art at conferences
or seminars organized by art academies and that always embarrasses me a little, as if there has been some mistake, because my
knowledge of modern art is actually very limited. I think that people
involved in art being interested in my work has something to do with
a concept I use, namely virtuosity. In my opinion, this concept is
the common ground between my political and philosophical reflection and the field of art. Virtuosity happens to the artist or performer
who, after performing, does not leave a work of art behind. I have
used the experience of the performing, virtuoso artist not so much to
make statements about art, but rather to indicate what is typical of
political action in general. Political action does not produce objects.
It is an activity that does not result in an autonomous object. What
strikes me is that today work, and not just work for a publishing
company, for television or for a newspaper, but all present-day work,
including the work done in the Volkswagen factory, or at Fiat or
Renault, tends to be an activity that does not result in an autonomous work, in a produced object. Of course the Volkswagen factory
cranks out cars, but this is entirely subject to a system of automatic
mechanized labour, while the duties of the individual Volkswagen
factory workers consist of communication that leaves no objects
behind: of this type of virtuoso activity. I see virtuosity as a model
for post-Fordist work in general. And there is more: what strikes
me is that the earliest type of virtuosity, the one that precedes all
others, precedes the dance, the concert, the actors performance and
so on, is typically the activity of our human kind, namely the use of
language. Using human language is an activity that does not result in
any autonomous and remaining work; it does not end in a material
result, and this is the lesson De Saussure, Chomsky and Wittgenstein
taught. Post-Fordist work is virtuoso and it became virtuoso when it
became linguistic and communicative.
What do I think about art? The only art of which I have a more
than superficial knowledge is modern and contemporary poetry.
I think that the experience of avant-garde art including poetry in
the 20th century is one of disproportion and of excess, of lack
of moderation. Great 20th-century avant-garde art and poetry in
particular from Celan to Brecht and Montale, has demonstrated
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the crisis of experiential units of measure. It is as if the platinum

metre bar kept in Paris to define the standard length of a metre
suddenly measured 90 or 110 centimetres. This emphasis on immoderation, disproportion and the crisis in units of measure is to be
credited greatly to avant-garde art and this is also where it edges up
to communism. With regard to the crisis of measure, art is a lot like
communism.
Only poetry, or other art as well?
Art in general, I expect, but I know poetry best. It is about disproportion. In addition to explaining the crisis, poetry wants to find new
standards of measure and proportion. Along the same lines the major
Italian poet and critic Franco Fortini has said that there is an objective common ground between avant-garde art and poetry and the
communist movement and I do not use the term communist in the
sense of actual socialism. Whats more, I consider actual socialism
as interpreted within the communist party and the Soviet Union as
communisms worst enemy.
This emphasis on the disproportion or crisis of units of measure
is present in the communist movement and they are looking for new
criteria, too. The experience of the artist-performer can provide us
with a general post-Fordist model.
What do you mean by crisis of the unit of measure?
It is as if the metre, the standard set to measure cognitive and
affective experience, no longer works. We see the same crisis in the
fields of politics and history: social prosperity is no longer produced
by labour time, but by knowledge, by a general knowing, by general
intellect, and as a result social prosperity and labour time are no
longer directly connected. The new standard to measure prosperity
is within the domain of intelligence, language and collaboration. The
problem is that social prosperity is still measured by the old standard
of labour time, while realities have changed and it is actually determined by general intellect. We can see the same thing happening in
20th-century art. It demonstrates the inadequacy of the old standards
and suggests, in the formal sphere and through the formal work of
poetry, new standards for the appraisal of our cognitive and affective experience. This is a point that brought the artistic avant-garde
close to the radical social movement and in this sense there is a kind
of brotherhood between the two: they would like to explain that the
old standards are no longer valid and to look for what might be new
standards. Another way to put the problem is: how can you locate a
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new public sphere, which has nothing to do with the state? Avantgarde art proved the impotence, the inadequacy, the disproportion
of the old standards through a formal investigation. The common
ground of art and social movements is never about content. Art
that relates to social resistance is beside the point, or rather art
expressing views on social resistance is not relevant. The radical
movement and avant-garde poetry touch on the formal investigation
that yields an index of new forms denoting new ways of living and
feeling, which results in new standards. All this is far removed from a
substantive relation.
So you see only a formal parallel? Do you think there is a historic
evolution in this formal parallelism and can there be any interaction between form and content?
No. When it comes to content, there is no common ground. There
is only contact with regard to form and the quest for forms. To me, it
is purely a matter of a formal investigation. The form of the poem is
like the form of a new public sphere, like the structure of a new idea.
Looking for forms in the arts is like looking for new standards of
what we may regard as society, power, and so on.
As new rules?
Yes, exactly, its about new rules. This collapse of the old rules
and anticipating new rules, even if only formal, is where aesthetics
and social resistance meet: this is the common ground where a new
society is anticipated that is based on general intellect and not on
the sovereignty of the state anymore.
Do you mean: rules to organize the standard?
It is a matter of defining concepts: the concept of power, of work,
of activity and so on. In connection with art I would like to add, and
this perhaps goes without saying, that after Benjamin we cannot
but wonder what the fate of technical ability to reproduce is going
to be. In our present context we need, aesthetically and politically,
a concept of unicity without the aura. You both know Benjamins
concept of the unicity of a work of art involving the aura, a kind
of religious cult surrounding the artwork as is for instance evident
in the case of the Mona Lisa. Benjamin points out that the aura
is destroyed by reproduction techniques: think about film and
photography.
The problem we face today is the problem of the singularity of
experience, which has nothing to do with aura or cult. To grasp the
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particularity of the experience we need a concept of unicity without

aura, for that particularity or unicity no longer has the character of
an aura. Nowadays it is all about finding the relation between the
highest possible degree of communality or generality and the highest
possible degree of singularity. In art forms, too, what matters is
finding the relation between the most general and the most particular. Art is a quest for unicity without any aura.
Art and philosophy face the same problem?
Absolutely. Philosophy is supposed to formulate a critique against
the universal on behalf of the general.1 The concepts of universal
1. We have in most cases translated
and general are constantly being mixed
the Italian comune by general
up, while they are in fact opposites. The
because of Virnos moves in the field
of logic, his wordplay on a principal
comune or general is not that which we
level, his translational referrals
encounter in you, in him, in me but that
to Marxs notion of general intellect. However, the Italian comune
which occurs, passes, between us. My brain also means common, communal,
collective. So please keep in
is general yet simultaneously particular
mind that in each case, the logical
because it is not like yours or his: only
general also echoes the English
common.
the universal aspects are. Aspects that
are equally present in us all are universal. General refers to what
exists or occurs in the borderland, between you and me, in the relation between you, him and me, and in that sense there is a constant
movement between the particular and the general. Marxs concept of
general intellect is general, just as the English language is general
and not universal. Language serves as a model for the general that
only exists within a community and that cannot exist apart from
the community. Our mother tongue, the language we speak, does
not exist apart from the relation with a community each of us has
individually, whereas our bifocal eye sight does exist in each of us
individually, apart from the community. There are things that only
exist inside relationships. When Marx speaks of general intellect,
he refers to collaboration and so to something like that, which only
exists in the in between. This concept of Marxs refers to the general
good. Now I think that in modernity, the general in both art and
philosophy is involved in a complex emancipatory struggle to get
away from the universal. This is also how I interpret other globalization or new global movements: they represent the dimension of the
general that criticizes the universal. Sovereignty, on the other hand,
is a form of the universal. So the question we now face is: What
aesthetic and political experiences can we develop to transfer from
the universal to the general without consequently destroying the
particular?
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Or take what philosophers call the individuation principle,

meaning the valuation of everything that is unique and unrepeatable
in our lives. Speaking of individuation implies that you consider the
individual a result, not a starting point. The individual is a result
of a movement that is rooted in the communal and yet is, or is
becoming, particular. It is Marx who, for general intellect, uses the
term social individual. We can postulate that the general is something pre-individual, a kind of general consciousness that exists
before individuals form, and from which they form. This general
pre-individual is a we that exists before the different Is develop,
so is not the sum of all Is. This is also in perfect agreement with
the view on human development of the Russian psychologist and
linguist Vygotsky, who was actually heavily influenced by Marx: prior
to anything else there exists a collective social context and only
beyond and from that context does the child develop into a separate
individual subject. Or remember the formidable discovery of the
mirror neurons by the neurosciences, which tells us there is a kind
of general sensing, an empathy that precedes the constitution of the
separate subject. The Italian scientist Gallese, who contributed to
this discovery, speaks of a space in which the we is central. I think
all these expressions by Vygotsky, Marx and Gallese are different
ways to grasp the concept of the general as opposed to the concept
of the universal. I would like to highlight this contrast, which is a
hard nut that both political movements and artistic research will
have to crack. The alliance between the general and the singular
opposes the state and its machinery. Today, movements that side
with the multitudes carefully anticipate this alliance: the multitudes are individuals who nevertheless maintain strong ties with
the general. On the other hand, the state and post-Fordist society
transform the general into the universal; they transform the general
intellect into a source of financial gain and social collaboration, and
virtuosity into patterns and structures of post-Fordist production.
Returning to the connection between art and politics: how do you
feel about engaged art, for instance about what Brian Holmes
does or Michelangelo Pistoletto and his Cittadelarte Fondazione
Pistoletto? How do you feel about art that takes up a substantive
political standpoint as well? Is it relevant?
In this context I would like to talk about the Situationists and
Debord, for they provide an example of an artistic movement,
Debord and Situationiste Internationale, turning into a political
avant-garde. To me, engaged art is an integral part of political moveThe Dismeasure of Art

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ments, one of its components. Political movements use a lot of tools,

including means of communication like the Internet, and politically
engaged art is one of those tools. It is a component of movements
political capital.
Yet I would once again like to underline that the most important
effect of art is set in the formal sphere. In that sense, even art that
is remote from political engagement touches upon the social and
political reality. The two are not conflicting matters. They operate on
different levels. The formal investigation produces criteria, units of
measure, whereas the directly political engagement of the artist is a
specific form of political mobilization.
Do you mean to say that even politically engaged art is still part
of a formal investigation? Engagement is closely connected to a
successful formal investigation?
Yes, what I mean is that even artists who are remote from the
political movement may, through their search for new forms and
expressions and in spite of themselves, get in touch with the needs
of such a political movement, and may be used by it. Brecht as well
as poets much more remote from social realities, like Montale, realized a similar relation. The Situationists were very important when
they became a political movement, but from that moment on they
were no longer avant-garde art: its about two modes of existence.
They clearly illustrate this double take. Before 1960 they were an
artistic movement rooted in Dadaism and Surrealism, afterwards
they participated in social resistance, making the same mistakes or
gaining the same merits as other political activists. Another problem
is that when language becomes the main principle according to
which social reality is organized, social reality as a whole becomes
aesthetic.
So where would you situate art within society from a sociological
perspective? Or put the other way around: What would happen if
art was cut away from society? What social role do you ascribe to
fiction in society?
Well, I think that Enzensbergers quip is appropriate here. He said
poetry is no longer found in volumes of poetry but scattered over
society like an effervescent tablet dissolved in a glass of water. You
will find art everywhere, even in commercials. There is no longer a
monopolistic location for the production of art; the artistic experience is molecularly disseminated. We also live in a time, the postFordist era, in which human nature has become an economic stake.
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Every aspect of human nature (that we are linguistic beings, the

effect of environment on the human species) constitutes raw material for production. The debate about human nature that took place
between Foucault and Chomsky in Eindhoven in 1971 was very
important to me. This debate was at the heart of the social movements deliberations from the moment its translation was published
in Italy. You could say both parties were wrong. Foucault denied
there was any such thing as innate human nature, whereas Chomskys concept of this innate human nature was so rigid and deterministic that he thought he could deduce a political programme from
it. I believe this discussion ought to become the subject of renewed
study and that we need to have it again, to find new answers to
contemporary questions about the relation between human nature
and politics. You see, today aspects of human nature have become
sociological categories. One example is flexibility. Anthropologists
like Gehlen teach that the hallmark of human nature is the absence
of specialized instincts: we are the species without a specific milieu.
Anthropology uses notions such as natural, unchanging truth but,
particularly in our day and age, such natural truths have become
sociological truths and the phenomenon of flexibility and subphenomena, like migration, along with them. Another example: we
human beings always remain children, we hold on to certain childlike aspects our entire lives, we are chronically childlike. This, too,
has always been true but only now has lifelong learning become an
issue. Yet another example: the metahistorical aspect that we are
highly potential creatures. In the present context, this potential has
become labour power. From this perspective we can speak of biopolitics, because biological features have become a sociological category that is to say, a sociological category of capitalism. In no way
do I mean to say that flexibility and capitalism are sociological laws
of nature. Nothing stipulates that society has got to be organized in
this way, on the contrary. There is an aesthetic base component in
human nature which, in the present context, has become an aspect
of economic production. That is why matters have to be dealt with
on a fundamental level. The concept of labour power also includes
an aesthetic component, beside a communicative and a linguistic
aspect. The problem of and for art, both intrinsically and formally, is
to show this aesthetic component of the production process. Does
contemporary art indeed represent this widespread aesthetic dimension of present-day production? I cannot answer this question, but I
do think it needs to be asked. Human nature, aesthetic component,
post-Fordism, labour power: the discussion about art needs to be
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held in this conceptual constellation. What is left of aesthetics in

present-day production in the collaboration and in the communication that have become production power? Something transformed
the extraordinary position of the aesthetic experience within society,
for it is no longer extraordinary, singular and separate but has,
conversely, become an integral part of production.
Lets go back a little, to Enzensbergers quip and the place where
art is produced, does something like artistic autonomy exist
anymore? Do artistically autonomous places exist?
I think so, but not as many as there used to be.
So is it still possible for art to remain disengaged? Can art be
resistance and exodus?
I think it can. Linking the terms I used before to this question:
the land of the pharaoh, from which the exodus takes place, is
the universal. The exodus is away from the universal towards the
general, however this occurs among the phenomena of the present
context. The exodus involves the transformation of those very
present phenomena. Nothing is external, there is no outside. The
exodus occurs within post-Fordist production where linguistic
production and collaboration, as labour and production power,
create a public dimension that is not identical to the dimension of
the state. It is an exodus away from the state and its machinery and
towards a new public space that makes use of general intellect and
general knowledge. During the exodus the general intellect no longer
has the power to produce profit and surplus values but becomes
a political institution. What comes to mind is the space in which a
central we is a realistic basis for a new political institution. I think
the pre-individual dimension and the features of human nature that
post-Fordism put to work and converted to cash (flexibility, chronically childlike, no instinctive orientation or specific milieu) also give
us the opportunity to create new forms, but in a manner opposite to
what happens in todays institutions an exodus that provides what
we can see happening in post-Fordism with a new form. Flexibility
therefore, but interpreted as freedom. The chronically childlike
understood as prosperity, on condition that it stops transforming
into the necessity to learn lifelong as described by Richard Sennett.
An exodus within the present landscape.
It is generally understood that post-Fordisms breakthrough as
a global production principle took place in the 1960s and 1970s
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together with the student revolts and the Fiat strikes. Do you
think that prior to that time there were areas that ranked as
kinds of social laboratories for this production process? You
could say that immaterial labour commenced when Duchamp
entered his urinal in the New York exhibition. Would you support
the hypothesis that the laboratories of the present post-Fordism
are to be found in artistic production itself, particularly in
early modern readymade art? Max Weber showed that the spirit
of capitalism is deeply rooted in Protestantism. Can you indicate locations (of an artistic, religious or subcultural nature) in
society, in this Weberian or historical sense, where preparations
are being made for post-Fordism as a mental structure?
You mean a genealogy of post-Fordism? I would be very interested in a genealogical perspective dating back further than the
1960s and 1970s. I think we could regard the culture industry of
the 1930s and 1940s and onwards as the laboratory for post-Fordist
production that anticipated that which was embodied in industry in
general in the 1980s.
What would you consider examples of the 1930s culture industry?
Radio, film . . . to me, they anticipate post-Fordism for technical reasons: at that time, the unexpected becomes an indispensable element in the culture industry. The unexpected, which later
becomes the pivot of post-Fordist production in the form of the justin-time inventory strategy. There is no culture industry without an
outside-of-the-programme factor. And that reminds me of what the
two great philosopher-sociologists Horkheimer and Adorno wrote in
their chapter on culture industry of their Dialektik der Aufklrung:
culture, too, became an industrial sector and a capitalist assembly
line but one with a handicap, for it was not fully rational yet. It is this
handicap, not being able to foresee and organize everything, which
turns the culture industry into a post-Fordist laboratory. The culture
industry is the antechamber of present-day production techniques.
For what escapes programmes is, indeed, that element of flexibility.
And of course I also see that anticipation because the culture industrys base materials are language and imagination.
Today, we see artistic expressions and activities simply being
situated at the centre of post-Fordist economy. Think about, for
instance, artistic expressions in commercials or advertising
but also about the incredible growth of the cultural and creative industries. Art, or at least creativity, has not been socially
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marginal, which was how Michel de Certeau saw them for a long
time. Yet even Wittgenstein and you yourself place creative space
in the margin or as you call it, on a sidetrack. Might the discrepancy between margin and centre not be obsolete?
I see creativity as diffuse, without a privileged centre. As a
no-matter-what creativity, under weak leadership if you can call
it that, having no specific location, connected to the fact that we
humans are linguistic beings: art is anybodys.
Does creativity transform when it is at the centre of the postFordist production system? Or, more concrete: is there a difference between a creative thinker or artist and a web designer or a
publicity expert at the centre of the economic process? Are these
two kinds of creativity, or is it about the same kind of creativity?
This is a complex dialectic. First, it is important to post-Fordist
capitalism that creativity develops autonomously, so it can subsequently catch it and appropriate it. Capitalism cannot organize
reflection and creativity, for then it would no longer be creativity.
The form applied here is that of the ghetto: You go on and make
new music, and then we will go and commercialize that new music.
It is important for creativity to have autonomy, because it forms in
the collaboration that is general and consequently the opposite of
universal. Creativity feeds off the general. I would like to elucidate
this through the distinction Marx made between formal and real
subsumption or subjection. In the case of formal subsumption, the
capitalist appropriates a production cycle that already exists. In
the case of real subsumption, the capitalist organizes the production cycle moment by moment. Now it seems to me that the existent
post-Fordism in many cases implies that we have returned to formal
subsumption. It is important for social collaboration to produce its
intelligence and create its forms. Afterwards, that intelligence and
those forms are captured and incorporated by the capitalist, who
has no choice but to do so if he wants to acquire that which can only
grow outside of him or outside his organization. So the capitalists
want to seize autonomously and freely produced intelligence and
forms: to realize a surplus value of course, not to realize greater
freedom for the people.
A certain degree of autonomy or freedom is necessary and therefore permissible. Social collaboration has to be something with a
certain degree of self-organization in order to be productive in a
capitalist manner. If the work was organized directly by the capitalist, it would be unprofitable. To yield a profit and be useful from
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the perspective of the capitalist, the work needs to some extent to

be established through self-organization. It is difficult to grasp this
complex dialectic by using theoretical categories. That which is
really productive from an economic point of view is not the sum of
the individual labourers output, but the context of collaboration and
interaction provided that it follows its own logic of growth, investigation and invention to some extent. In other words, the process is
subject to our own initiative. It is a condition for my exploitation that
I produce intelligence and collaboration, and I can only do so when I
am, to some degree, free. So I need to be granted a certain degree of
autonomy in order to be exploited.
Can the myth of the autonomous artist be seen as a capitalist
construction?
First and foremost I think about the autonomy that is functional in
creating surplus value, the autonomy that is essential to innovation
and to the optimization and development of collaboration. This is a
patented and therefore a regulated autonomy, which is absolutely
vital when labour has become linguistic and communicative. At
that time, speaker-workers must be permitted autonomy. In Wittgensteinian terms it is a matter of language games being used as a
source of production. Language games do not just exist, they need
to be developed and that is impossible within a rigid structure with
all sentences and dialogues pre-recorded and scripted. Language
games presume some degree of freedom or autonomy. However, I do
not share the view that the present context includes more freedom
and prosperity. A grinding poverty reigns in post-Fordism. The worst
poverty you can imagine, for it is communication skills themselves
that are claimed, exploited, and as capital, too.
Now that we are talking about exploitation perhaps we might
address the question of how to fight it. Today in Rome we saw
posters displayed by the opposition featuring the slogan Il lavoro
nobilita. Il precariato no. Whether or not there is nobility in
labour remains to be seen, but we all agree that the precariat is
a condition to avoid, a grinding exploitation. We urgently need
forms of resistance, developed by and for precarious workers or
precari. What is your take on such forms of resistance? Are they,
in keeping with what you said earlier, forms of life? Can they be
artistic expressions as well? Can you concretize this?
Lets take the example of someone who works for Italian television and radio: thousands of people with an unclear and insecure
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status . . . are being exploited. They form a so-called precariat. They

have to work a lot, work hard, be inventive and focused all the time.
They do not make a lot of money, are employed for three months
and then unemployed for six more. How can these people organize?
Not in the workplace: now you see them there, now you dont. As a
rule, TV and radios precari are well-educated creative people with
a lot of cultural baggage, a rich cultural and social life: typical postFordist workers. However, what applies to them also applies to any
example of a precariat, including Alitalias. Developing forms of
resistance from, for and by the precari means doing so within the
very broad context in which they live their lives. It means involving
every aspect of their lives, their place of residence, the places they
spend their leisure, their communication networks. You cannot
organize television people without involving the districts they live in.
You cannot abstract from the theatres they visit. In short, the whole
problem concerns so many aspects and vital dimensions that developing a form of resistance means inventing new institutions.
How should I concretize this? How do we invent new institutions?
What can the forms of resistance of the precari look like? This is of
course the big X on the European political scene. Politics in Europe
means finding the precariat forms of resistance. There is a precedent, an example perhaps for this problem, in the IWW, Industrial
Workers of the World. At the beginning of the 20th century no-one
knew how to organize the mobile migrant labourers in the USA,
either. They were highly scattered, very mobile and their resistance
did not look as if it could be organized. Yet for about ten years the
IWW managed to put up their seemingly impossible struggle with
some success. Their importance therefore should not be underrated,
even if they did lose in the end and get massacred. Perhaps today,
we ought to look in the same direction, to a new kind of union that
will find a new form of resistance. The strike no longer works. We
need new forms that are much more linguistic and creative, much
more collaborative. The precari are the extreme product of the big
city experience and of post-Fordist capitalism. That is why they are
a foothold for the onset of reflection. Organizing them means organizing lives and there is no model for that. It cannot be done without
investigating the districts they move around in, their circuits of
cultural consumption, their collective habits. The precari are actually the social individual, therefore they are always more than one,
they are the counterpart of the general intellect. But organizing the
social individual is very hard for, as I said, they are more than one,
scattered, a brittle faction. We need research. Philosophy, including
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the philosophy of language, has to concern itself with the issue of

what resistance forms may be developed starting from the precari.
This is not a technical problem, on the contrary, it is an ethical
matter and also an artistic matter. It is an institutional problem.
Organizing the precari will mean finding new institutions in the
broad sense of the word and the opposite of state sovereignty. The
measure of resistance today depends precisely on dedication to this
major objective.
This is an abridged version of
the interview with Paolo Virno.
The complete text is available at
www.opencahier.nl

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