Is art work a labor of love? Are art objects expressions of incommensurability? What determines value when these objects enter networks of exchange? Through well­established and recent texts, this seminar will look at the overlapping systems – economic, discursive, technological, and institutional – that ultimately frame the contemporary art field. The internet and networked technologies destabilized how art is experienced and valued over the previous decade, changing the terms of creative labor. How might artists imagine new kinds of value(s) after the purported digital turn?

João Enxuto and Erica Love live and work as artists and researchers in New York (USA). They collaborate on projects that focus on the art field, its systems of valuation, and the datalogical structure of exhibition spaces, institutions, and built environments. Enxuto received an MFA in Photography from RISD and Love holds BAs from Brown University in Economics and Visual Arts and an MFA from UCLA. Together they were fellows at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program for 2012-2013. They have given talks, written essays, and exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Whitney Museum of Art, the New Museum, Anthology Film Archives, Walker Art Center, Pratt Institute, Yossi Milo Gallery, Carriage Trade, Louisiana Museum in Denmark, and the Tamayo Museum in Mexico City. Enxuto and Love's writing has appeared in Wired Magazine, Mousse Contemporary Art Magazine, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, and Initiales, among others. They have taught at the Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts, New York University, City College, and as Ernest G. Welch Fellows at Georgia State University. Most recently they founded the Institute for Southern Contemporary Art (ISCA), an experimental platform that uses machine learning to extract capital from the art market to fund critical practices.