Saturday, February 27, 2010
Radicant Aesthetics
1. "By means of these new modes of spatializing time, contemporary art produces forms that are able to capture this experience of the world through practices that could be described as 'time-specific'--analogous to the 'site-specific' art of the 1960s--and by introducing figures from the realm of spatial displacement into the composition of its works" (79). Last week, we discussed art that needed "explanation." For example, Tsuyoshi Ozawa's Vegetable Weapon series are illuminated by the knowledge that after the photographs were taken, the "guns" were dismantled and the vegetables made into traditional dishes. Is the artwork the act of creating and then dismantling the weapon, rather than the photographs themselves? Are the photographs just remnants or artifacts of the work, a translation of time? Are these types of works the natural result of time-specificity?
2. "Until well into the 1980s, a fashion in clothing or music had time to develop before giving way to another that was equally distinct. By contrast, today's trends constitute a kind of continuous, low-amplitude motion, whose content no longer corresponds to behavioral or existential choices, as it did for the great pop culture movements of the last fifty years of the twentieth century" (80). How does the internet and the new accessibility of information play into this argument? Is this perspective distorted? Is this statement myopic, a natural result of looking at the past from the present? Or is the internet and its connective possibilities causing the acceleration and shifting of trends?
3. "But the emergence of this iconography also reflects the character of an era in which multiplication has become the dominant mental operation. After the radical subtraction of early modernism, after the analytical divisions of a Conceptual art in search of the artwork's foundations, after a postmodern eclecticism whose central figure was addition, our era finds itself haunted by the multiple" (117-18). Modernism was concerned with subtraction, of reducing the form to its essence. It is concerned with inserting objects into emptiness. In the radicant world, artists are doing the opposite. They are inserting a pause, a spot of silence into a world of chaos and endless proliferation. If the question for modernism is perhaps "what's left?" then the radicant world might counter with "what's gone?"
4. Bourriaud provides an interesting description: "At the end of the 1970s, when the modernist engine stopped, there were many who proclaimed the end of the movement itself. Thus, the postmodernists walked around the vehicle, deconstructed its mechanics, broke it down to spare parts, and formed theories regarding the nature of the breakdown before strolling off into the surrounding area and announcing that everyone was now free to walk however they liked, in whatever direction they chose. The artists under discussion here intend to remain the car, in the same direction as modernity, but while operating their vehicle according to the reliefs they encounter and with the aid of a different fuel. The erre would then be what remains of the forward motion initiated by modernism, the field that is open to our own modernity, our altermodernity" (93). What happens when this erre dissipates, when both fuel and momentum is gone? Do we remain stationary? Do we turn back? Do we get out and continue the journey by foot? Or do we hitchhike the rest?
5. ". . . Krauss sees in Broothaers's generic eagle an emblem that 'announces not the end of art but the termination of the individual arts as medium-specific. . . . Twenty-five years later, all over the world, in every biennale and at every art fair, the eagle principle functions as the new academy. Whether it calls itself installation of institutional critique, the international spread of mixed media installation has become ubiquitous'" (136-37). What is the "post-medium condition"? There seems to be more and more artists that are painters, sculptors, and photographers, artists that move fluidly between disciplines rather than identifying with one. Is this the result of a shift away from medium-specific art? Will medium-specific art be relegated to craft?
6. "While some artists seem to distance themselves from this precarious aesthetic, often they are only separated from it by their works' degree of material solidity" (90). Koons increases the material density of luxury items, Hirst highlights the fragility of life within luxurious frames, and Cattelan sets luxury against poverty. "In the context of luxury, vanity acquires new meaning. When social cynicism reaches heights like these, the artist becomes a kind of pre-Socratic philosopher, the only one who can say to the emperor, 'get out of the way, you're standing in my sun'" (91). How does Bourriaud's idea of luxury, vanity and kitsch (especially in reference to Koons, Hirst and Cattelan) compare to Heartney's Art & Popular Culture: The Warhol Effect? Are these artists semionauts navigating through a new precariousness or simply master publicists/agent provocateurs?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Altermodernity
1. "In the meantime, we are witnessing the emergence of a kind of post-modern aesthetic courtesy, an attitude that consists of refusing to pass critical judgment for fear of ruffling the sensitivity of the other. . . . For what could be more insulting and paternalistic than discourses that dismiss out of hand the possibility that a Congolese or Laotian artist could be pitted against Jasper Johns or Mike Kelley in a shared theoretical space and made the object of the same criteria of aesthetic evaluation?"
But why must they be pitted against Jasper Johns or Mike Kelley, anyhow? Isn't that presupposing that Western artists are superior? Or at least their "criteria of aesthetic evaluation"?
2. "In the past, that is, cinema brought us information about the world around us; now, it seems, this role is for the most part entrusted to contemporary art. . . . To make a long story short: while film has been moving more and more toward the image (to the detriment of the shot), art has been going in the opposite direction, fleeing the symbol to confront the real through the documentary form."
Is this a generalization? What is the evidence of this?
3. "What it means to be Mexican in Germany has little to do with what it means to be Mexican in Mexico. With the standardizing tide of globalization traversing virtually all nation states, the portable dimension of national identities has become more important than their local reality."
But is being Mexican in Germany comparable to being Thai in America or French in Chile? Is this what Bourriaud means when he states, "there is the option of joining those who are heading toward the same place, even if their destination is hazy and hypothetical. The modern event, in essence, appears as the constitution of a group that cuts across clubs and origins by uprooting them. Whatever their type, their social class, their culture, their geographic or historical origin, and their sexual orientation, that group's participants constitute a troop that is defined by its speed and direction, a nomadic tribe cut off from any prior anchorage, from any fixed identity."
4. "And yet the immigrant, the exile, the tourist, and the urban wanderer are the dominant figures of contemporary culture."
Bourriaud proposes this, it seems, without any clear of evidence of that fact. Is this statement true? What evidence is there? Does he mean contemporary culture as a whole?
5. "[I]n an era in which ancient particularities are being eradicated in the name of economic efficiency, aesthetic multiculturalism urges us to examine with particular care cultural codes that are on the path to extinction, and in doing so makes contemporary art into a conservatory of traditions and identities that are in reality being wiped out by globalization."
Is globalization wiping out traditions and identities? What about the advent of technology that increases connections across the world? Internet, cell phones, affordable airfare... don't these help conserve traditions and identities especially among people displaced from their origins?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Postproduction
1. In RiP! A Remix Manifesto Girl Talk describes his creative process as taking pre-existing data to create something new. This mirrors one of the central arguments of Postproduction. Bourriaud writes, "The artistic question is no longer: 'what can we make that is new?' but 'how can we make do with what we have? . . . Artists today program forms more than they compose them: rather than transfigure a raw element (blank canvas, clay etc.), they remix available forms and make use of data." Postproduction is centered on recycling and re-utilizing the past. "While the chaotic proliferation of production led Conceptual artists to the dematerialization of the work of art, it leads postproduction artists toward strategies of mixing and combining products. Overproduction is no longer seen as a problem, but as a cultural ecosystem."
2. A detournement is a version of a pre-existing work that has a meaning antagonistic to the original. "One can denounce nothing from the outside; one must first inhabit the form of what one wants to criticize. Imitation is subversive, much more so than discourses of frontal opposition that only make formal gestures of subversion." Describing his remixes, Girl Talk says, "Put Elton John in a headlock and pour beer over his head." Are Girl Talk's remixes a form of detournement? Does detournement devalue the original? Bourriaud argues: "While the detournement of preexisting artworks is a currently employed tool, artists use it not to 'devalorize' the work of art but to utilize it." Is this only the case with artworks? What about the inherent subversiveness of detournements?
3. Bourriaud states: "The 'semionaut' imagines the links, the likely relations between disparate sites. A sampler, a machine that reprocesses musical products, also implies constant activity; to listen to records becomes work in itself, which diminishes the dividing line between reception and practice, producing new cartographies of knowledge. This recycling of sounds, images, and forms implies incessant navigation within the meanderings of cultural history, navigation which itself becomes the subject of artistic practice." Art in the twentieth century is no longer about the beginning or the end. Instead, it is about the journey, the navigation through a culture of postproduction. He continues: "Precariousness is at the center of a formal universe in which nothing is durable, everything is movement: the trajectory between two places is favored in relation to the place itself, and encounters are more important than the individuals who compose them." Art is no longer concentrated on the artist or the object. Rather, it concerns itself with the relationships between things.
4. The act of creation can be the act of choosing. "[T]o create is to insert an object into a new scenario, to consider it a character in a narrative." This can be done through detourage, literally defined as "the process of blocking out the background behind an object." In postproduction, it is also described as "the way our culture operates by transplanting, grafting, and decontextualizing things." Has the act of re-utilization overtaken the act of creation? What is more significant, the creation of something new or the decomposition of something old?
5. The line between consumption and production is blurring. "Because consumption creates the need for new production, consumption is both its motor and motive. This is the primary virtue of the readymade: establishing an equivalence between choosing and fabricating, consuming and producing..." Consumers are becoming producers. Compare this to Radiohead fans who download and consume the album and then produce online remixes. Or Mike Bidlo, Elaine Sturtevant, and Sherrie Levine who "consume" the works of Marcel Duchamp and then reproduce it.
2. A detournement is a version of a pre-existing work that has a meaning antagonistic to the original. "One can denounce nothing from the outside; one must first inhabit the form of what one wants to criticize. Imitation is subversive, much more so than discourses of frontal opposition that only make formal gestures of subversion." Describing his remixes, Girl Talk says, "Put Elton John in a headlock and pour beer over his head." Are Girl Talk's remixes a form of detournement? Does detournement devalue the original? Bourriaud argues: "While the detournement of preexisting artworks is a currently employed tool, artists use it not to 'devalorize' the work of art but to utilize it." Is this only the case with artworks? What about the inherent subversiveness of detournements?
3. Bourriaud states: "The 'semionaut' imagines the links, the likely relations between disparate sites. A sampler, a machine that reprocesses musical products, also implies constant activity; to listen to records becomes work in itself, which diminishes the dividing line between reception and practice, producing new cartographies of knowledge. This recycling of sounds, images, and forms implies incessant navigation within the meanderings of cultural history, navigation which itself becomes the subject of artistic practice." Art in the twentieth century is no longer about the beginning or the end. Instead, it is about the journey, the navigation through a culture of postproduction. He continues: "Precariousness is at the center of a formal universe in which nothing is durable, everything is movement: the trajectory between two places is favored in relation to the place itself, and encounters are more important than the individuals who compose them." Art is no longer concentrated on the artist or the object. Rather, it concerns itself with the relationships between things.
4. The act of creation can be the act of choosing. "[T]o create is to insert an object into a new scenario, to consider it a character in a narrative." This can be done through detourage, literally defined as "the process of blocking out the background behind an object." In postproduction, it is also described as "the way our culture operates by transplanting, grafting, and decontextualizing things." Has the act of re-utilization overtaken the act of creation? What is more significant, the creation of something new or the decomposition of something old?
5. The line between consumption and production is blurring. "Because consumption creates the need for new production, consumption is both its motor and motive. This is the primary virtue of the readymade: establishing an equivalence between choosing and fabricating, consuming and producing..." Consumers are becoming producers. Compare this to Radiohead fans who download and consume the album and then produce online remixes. Or Mike Bidlo, Elaine Sturtevant, and Sherrie Levine who "consume" the works of Marcel Duchamp and then reproduce it.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
People of Interest
Gabriel Orozco
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster
Vanessa Beecroft
Philippe Parreno
Thomas Hirschborn
Mike Kelley
Michel Majerus
Pierre Joseph
Daniel Pflumm
Gerald Murphy
Stuart Davis
Douglas Gordon
Olivier Mosset
Allan McCollum
Ken Lum
Philip Johnson
Gordon Matta-Clark
Swetlana Heger
Plamen Dejanov
Jorge Pardo
Alvar Aalto
Arne Jakobsen
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Angela Bulloch
Tobias Rehberger
Carsten Nicolai
Sylvie Fleury
John Miller
Sydney Stucki
Andrei Tarkovsky
Matthieu Laurette
Jens Haaning
Michel de Certeau
Marcel Broodthaers
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Gilles Deleuze
Arman
Cesar
Daniel Spoerri
Claes Oldenburg
Raymond Hains
Jacques de la Villegle
Martial Raysse
Barbara Kruger
Haim Steinback
Miro
Walker Evans
Degas
Ashley Bickerton
Jason Rhoades
Dan Cameron
Claude Levi-Strauss
Arcimboldo
George Adeagbo
Miltos Manetas
Surasi Kusolwong
Guy Debord
Asger Jorn
Gil Wolman
Anselm Jappe
Raymond Hains
Ken Ishii
Clive Campbell (DJ Kool Here)
John Giorno
Alex Bag
Candice Breitz
Martha Graham
Max Ernst
Bertrand Lavier
John Armleder
Larry Poons
Barnard Buffet
Jan Vercruysse
Lynda Benglis
Jean Fautrier
Charles Lapicque
Nicolas De Stael
Lewensberg
On Kawara
Douglas Huebler
Laszio Moholy-Nagy
Tony Smith
Seth Siegelaub
Carl Andre
Robert Smithson
Jannis Kouneiiis
Giuseppe Penone
Giulio Paolini
Alighiero Boetti
Michel Asher
Jon Knight
Massimo de Carlo
Robert Delaunay
Maurizio Nannucci
Jasper Johns
Richard Prince
Bernard Joisten
Philippe Perrin
Andrea Zittel
Daniel Buren
Dan Graham
Michael Asher
Hans Haacke
Robert Barry
Gillian Wearing
Christine Hill
Michael Elmgreen
Ingar Dragset
Alexandre Gyorfi
Carsten Holler
Alix Lambert
Matthieu Laurette
Navin Rawanchaikul
Fabrice Hybert
Joseph Grigely
Ann Lee
Yves Lecoq
Lawrence Weiner
Stanley Brouwn
Mike Bidlo
Elaine Sturtevant
Paul Valery
Allan Kaprow
Pierre Levy
Beorge Brecht
Piet Mondrian
Yve-Alain Bois
Julian Schnabel
David Salle
Giorgio de Chirico
Alberto Savinio
Achille Bonito Oliva
Enzo Cucchi
Allen Ruppersberg
Louise Lawler
Henry Stullmann
Jakob Kolding
John Heartfield
Fatimah Tuggar
Gunilla Klingberg
Nils Norman
Sean Snyder
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster
Vanessa Beecroft
Philippe Parreno
Thomas Hirschborn
Mike Kelley
Michel Majerus
Pierre Joseph
Daniel Pflumm
Gerald Murphy
Stuart Davis
Douglas Gordon
Olivier Mosset
Allan McCollum
Ken Lum
Philip Johnson
Gordon Matta-Clark
Swetlana Heger
Plamen Dejanov
Jorge Pardo
Alvar Aalto
Arne Jakobsen
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Jesus Soto
Angela Bulloch
Tobias Rehberger
Carsten Nicolai
Sylvie Fleury
John Miller
Sydney Stucki
Andrei Tarkovsky
Matthieu Laurette
Jens Haaning
Michel de Certeau
Marcel Broodthaers
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Gilles Deleuze
Arman
Cesar
Daniel Spoerri
Claes Oldenburg
Raymond Hains
Jacques de la Villegle
Martial Raysse
Barbara Kruger
Haim Steinback
Miro
Walker Evans
Degas
Ashley Bickerton
Jason Rhoades
Dan Cameron
Claude Levi-Strauss
Arcimboldo
George Adeagbo
Miltos Manetas
Surasi Kusolwong
Guy Debord
Asger Jorn
Gil Wolman
Anselm Jappe
Raymond Hains
Ken Ishii
Clive Campbell (DJ Kool Here)
John Giorno
Alex Bag
Candice Breitz
Martha Graham
Max Ernst
Bertrand Lavier
John Armleder
Larry Poons
Barnard Buffet
Jan Vercruysse
Lynda Benglis
Jean Fautrier
Charles Lapicque
Nicolas De Stael
Lewensberg
On Kawara
Douglas Huebler
Laszio Moholy-Nagy
Tony Smith
Seth Siegelaub
Carl Andre
Robert Smithson
Jannis Kouneiiis
Giuseppe Penone
Giulio Paolini
Alighiero Boetti
Michel Asher
Jon Knight
Massimo de Carlo
Robert Delaunay
Maurizio Nannucci
Jasper Johns
Richard Prince
Bernard Joisten
Philippe Perrin
Andrea Zittel
Daniel Buren
Dan Graham
Michael Asher
Hans Haacke
Robert Barry
Gillian Wearing
Christine Hill
Michael Elmgreen
Ingar Dragset
Alexandre Gyorfi
Carsten Holler
Alix Lambert
Matthieu Laurette
Navin Rawanchaikul
Fabrice Hybert
Joseph Grigely
Ann Lee
Yves Lecoq
Lawrence Weiner
Stanley Brouwn
Mike Bidlo
Elaine Sturtevant
Paul Valery
Allan Kaprow
Pierre Levy
Beorge Brecht
Piet Mondrian
Yve-Alain Bois
Julian Schnabel
David Salle
Giorgio de Chirico
Alberto Savinio
Achille Bonito Oliva
Enzo Cucchi
Allen Ruppersberg
Louise Lawler
Henry Stullmann
Jakob Kolding
John Heartfield
Fatimah Tuggar
Gunilla Klingberg
Nils Norman
Sean Snyder
Monday, February 8, 2010
Rainer Maria Rilke
Along the Sun-Drenched Roadside
Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the great
hollow half-treetrunk, which for generations
has been a trough, renewing in itself
an inch or two of rain, I satisfy
my thirst: taking the water's pristine coolness
into my whole body through my wrists.
Drinking would be too powerful, too clear;
but this unhurried gesture of restraint
fills my whole consciousness with shining water.
Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.
Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the great
hollow half-treetrunk, which for generations
has been a trough, renewing in itself
an inch or two of rain, I satisfy
my thirst: taking the water's pristine coolness
into my whole body through my wrists.
Drinking would be too powerful, too clear;
but this unhurried gesture of restraint
fills my whole consciousness with shining water.
Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
August Stramm
Battlefield
Yielding clods lulls iron off to sleep
bloods clot the patches where they oozed
rusts crumble
fleshes slime
sucking lusts around decay.
Murder on murder blinks
in childish eyes.
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