
M A N I F E S T O
WHITE MARKET is a label for performance art.
WHITE MARKET is a platform for performative interventions which take place in urban environments and engage with materials and gestures of the everyday to create temporary spaces for art.
WHITE MARKET foregrounds the artist’s exploration of his/ her market value, exploring performance as merchandise, the body as material and gesture as form.
The name WHITE MARKET references the rules and regulations of the established art market. However, with its opacity and deliberations the latter barely distinguishes itself from black markets, determining the market value of merchandise according to its own interests. WHITE MARKET plays on the opacity, deliberations and dynamics of the art market, arguing that the market value of the performer’s body is in any case determined by the institutions of art.
WHITE MARKET sits at the crossroads between art and the everyday. The artist’s body acts as the interface and the locus for the intersection of different systems and values. The performers displace and subvert familiar activities, changing the logic and creating new contexts. One system is displaced by another. The interventions invite different kinds of experiences which also add new values to the art market.
WHITE MARKET - Market
The project organizes performances on a regular basis that embody the concept of WHITE MARKET literally, physically and sensually. Gestures are turned into propositions and invite the passer-by to participate. The artists of WHITE MARKET and its associates create interventions within different kinds of markets to reveal their specific rules and values. Interventions act as ‘syncopes’, suspending local rhythms for a fraction to reflect on the environment. Market days take place physically as well as virtually.
WHITE MARKET- Forum
The organization also constitutes a platform for debate by and for performance artists. The Forum is a basis for the organization, which communicates via the internet and disseminates its activities through public events.
WHITE MARKET - Workshops
The artists offer workshops for performance artists, students and interested others. The workshops address the role of the body in performance art and explore and create performance in public places.
WHITE MARKET – Shop
The artists use traditional structures such as auctions, lotteries and sales (through market stalls or online) to sell relics of its performative interventions. White Market thereby creates its own merchandise and also re-introduces discarded matter back into the economy.