by Francesco Spampinato (Author)
A celebration of the contemporary artist as music producer
Can You Hear Me? Music Labels by Visual Artists is the first survey on the obscure and fascinating phenomenon of record labels founded and run by visual artists. It reflects on the way these extra-artistic activities contribute to redefining the role of the contemporary artist as a catalyst of intellectual energies and producer of cultural processes at large. Moreover, it tries to understand if and how these activities challenged the art world's static and modern perception of art and art works.
Spanning from 1980 to 2015, the project consists of a book and an exhibition that celebrate the contemporary artist as a multi-facetted producer of collaborative projects. The highlighted labels have released a dynamic spectrum of activities in and outside the art world and remained untouched by its unwritten capitalist code, attempting to develop alternative forms of cultural production and attract new audiences.