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?