Capitalist Nihilism and the Murder of Art - Lukas MeisnerLife as an Artist after the Murder of Art - Eef VeldkampArt has been murdered. Lukas Meisner and Eef Veldkamp set out on endeavour to find its killer: capitalism.Tragically, the moment art was born it was murdered. The historic avant-gardes performed their jobs professionally – as midwives for stillbirth. Yet, their sublation of art in life was also suicidal, since what they understood as ‘life’ in fact was the undead labour of vitalist capital. Hence, ever since art gives the formula first and foremost for one process: capital’s latest macrocosmic restructuring, which was its burial of the bourgeoisie.“In this sense, the salons of the 19th century were the last bourgeois refuge of art before it was exposed to learn from Las Vegas. The new centre around which art circulates ever since is not a centre but a constant loss of centres, or circulation itself: capital.” – from Capitalist Nihilism and the Murder of Art“The chronology of art is turned upside down, for now first an ear has to bloodily fly off before the artwork proper can exist, wonder only what one needs to cut off in order to build an oeuvre? Life itself, obviously, for only when it seizes something as an ‘oeuvre’ can come into existence; only when the body of the artist decomposes in the ground, the body of work of that body can finally be composed.”– from Life as an Artist After the Murder of Art and Some Reviving Thoughts