The 20th century witnessed a change in paradigm of the phenomenon of art: the relationships between art and society changed, particularly in terms of the analysis of that art which, driven by intellectual interest, seeks to go beyond traditional supports.

In the first place, we should ask ourselves how we reconcile the demands of the dissidents with the economic interests of the establishment. Those of us who work with ephemeral art find it complicated to define a profile of the possible customer, since these types of manifestations —most of them ephemeral or requiring a complex computerised support— have a very limited life expectancy. These pieces are difficult to display in a private or public space, they have not been conceived to establish an interrelationship with everyday reality. On the contrary, these artistic manifestations seek to promote values closer to investigation, whether in language, the medium or discourse itself – a fact which contributes to deconfiguration or dematerialisation to the extent that once the action has been performed or the installation/intervention disassembled, all that remains of the work is documentation. This makes it difficult to establish a commercial relationship between the ephemeral component entailed by working in real time and the commercial interests of the objects.

This new paradigm forces us to reflect that the profile of the customer of present-day art, more dematerialised or virtual, cannot be the subject who buys products made and distributed by the art market, but is found instead in the figure of the customer who contributes to the production of the art work. And this new task is performed today by collectors, sponsors or institutions. In our politico-cultural context, art collecting does not receive much encouragement, so the greatest contribution comes from sponsor firms who loan materials and/or equipment, and institutions who provide grants or subsidies and/or organise exhibitions, which help to generate work unchained from the conventional art trade. Consequently, at this moment the principal art customers are the institutions, since it is they who can produce it and distribute these productions of a more adventurous art which lies in a plane far removed from popular acceptance.

But finally we realise that any artistic manifestation needs to have resources, finance and a context for existing. Therefore, in the face of a new creative paradigm there appears a new economic paradigm which offers it support.

Marta Pol i Rigau