For this meeting we will be reading a text that deals specifically with affect in relation to art production and with the question of how artists can ‘negotiate’ the often complex minefield of affect in their work. ‘The Artist is a Currency’ is a transcript from a panel discussion between Rhea Anastas, Gregg Bordowitz, Andrea Fraser, Jutta Koether and Glenn Ligon that took place in March 2006 and was published in Grey Room. Together, this group of artists discuss the position of the artist and the art work, moving from their individual practices to larger issues on the nature of art, subjectivity, and the performance of identity.

In addition, we are reading an essay by Andrea Fraser with the affective title ‘Why Does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry?’, published in Grey Room in 2005. Triggered by her personal encounter with a specific work of art, Fraser confronts herself with the affective dimensions of aesthetic experience by simply asking what has constituted her emotional response. Andrea Fraser is an artist whose practice can be placed in the traditions of feminist performance art and institutional critique. The art institution itself is often a subject of her work. Along with the panel discussion, this text offers food for thought on the production and experience of affect in art.