Contemporary visual arts and practices of transnational encounter in Katarina Seda's OVER and OVER and Ahmed Öğüt's Another Perfect Day

Art and education are two cultural institutions that sit in rather ambiguous relation to the values of entrepreneurialism. While overtly sharing with entrepreneurialism the valorisation of innovation, art, and education do not align squarely with commercialism. Seemingly, they are both situated in a space of intellectual or aesthetic exploration and separated from each other by instrumental values and monetary interests. Various critical inquiries into the operating dynamics of the two have challenged this misconception. Art historian Julian Stallbrass stated that ‘the economy of art reflects the economy of finance capital’ (2004: 4), meaning that art production, too, is subordinated to market demand and, further, more that the geography of the art market reflects that of the world’s main financial centres. In his view art production has become the cultural project of global neoliberalism, an unending refrain celebrating ‘the demolition of barriers to trade, and the glorious cultural mixing that results’ (Stalibrass, 2004: 13). Around the same time, Henry Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux (2004) signalled the losses brought about by the neoliberal infiltration in the values of higher education. The aligning of the university with contemporary neoliberal and corporate values coincides with its abandoning of democratic values, and a disinvestment from its goal of educating students as critical thinkers and engaged citizens.