Nicolas Bourriaud, THE RADICANT
Altermodern Chapter
“It is roots that make people suffer”
Some Definitions and Explanations:
Radicant – an organism that adds new roots as it advances, a multiplicity
Radical – an organism that only grows roots in one place and is anchored in a particular soil
Globalization – globally integrated capitalism; a world of the real and of economy; a standardizing of the cultural and social reality of all cultures to the Western model and format
Modern art is seen as a succession of formal inventions, a procession of individual and collective experiences, each bearing a new vision of art that replaces the old. It does not allow dialogue among individuals who do not share the same history or cultural identity
· it spoke the language of the colonial west and critiqued art through this model of thinking
· its main motivator was the passion for radicality and it progressed by pruning, eliminating, subtracting, and purifying with the objective of reaching pure-opticality which was formalized by Clement Greenberg - “the conventions not essential to the viability of a medium be discarded as soon as they are recognized”
· the root, the universal, the essence becomes an ideal goal
· works of art are judged on a criteria of novelty
Post-modern art has lumped together multiple versions of the ‘after’ modern art period. At its core, it undermined radicality and replaced the abstract and theoretical universalism of modernism. The movement believed there can be no true radicality without a desire for a new beginning or without the assumption of the status of a program.
· postmodern art operates under the same logic by which global capital operates i.e. commodity consumption and values
· value system created an aesthetic courtesy (refusing to pass critical judgment to remain politically correct) which resulted in the treatment of non-Western artists as guests and hence, not as full-fledged artists
· only technology is allowed and supposed to progress; certainly not art – we are done with that
· operates on a logic of membership – a work of art is explained by the condition, status or origin of the artist, creating recognizable images so the market has commodities to facilitate distribution and sale in the market; hence the origin takes precedence over the destination of forms and ideas
· implicitly favors a perpetual status quo in that it helps keep powerful cultures in a state of pseudo-authority, warehousing signs where they remain available for any merchandizing venture
The Threat of the Global World:
The global world tells us to compromise our rituals, our culture, and our history except in locations reserved for that purpose, such as museums.
Consequently, we live in environments that no longer reflect any image of us and it becomes difficult to find our identity on any solid ground. We live, as in Walter Benjamin’s essay, in a field of strangeness and of estrangement. We are overloaded with signs and surrounded by works that are constantly expanding. And these signs are adrift from historical significance and no longer linked to a reality, just cultural referents.
There is no room to conceive of a new beginning as per the modern model of thought.
We have no choice but to move in cultures without identifying with them, to surf on forms without penetrating them.
Frantz Fanon – “the ultimate weapon of the colonizer is his ability to impose his image over that of the colonized people”. The capitalist machine replaces local codes with flows of capital, delocalizes the imagination and turns individuals into labor power – it produces an abstract painting
The culture today essentially constitutes a mobile entity, unconnected to any soil.
And the merchandise that art produces is style.
A complete shattering of the relations between representations and abstraction.
If it is possible for every artist to achieve global fame in accord with the codes and references of his or her own culture then this makes contemporary art into a reservoir of traditions and identities that are being wiped out by globalization.
It becomes essential to replace a history dominated by ‘dead white males’ with a genuine historical pluralism – the anti-colonial model.
Globalization is threatening our diversity. And this is a big problem.
The Argument for Diversity – Victor Segalen:
Victor Segalen (1878-1919) French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, linguist and literary critic. Lived in Polynesia and China but travelled the world. Defender of native culture. Died under mysterious circumstances.
Aesthetics of diversity, a defense of heterogeneity, the value of the plurality of words – all of which in danger of extinction by the civilizing machine of the West.
Exotic tension of the world is decreasing and we must fight against this decay. Diversity is the source of all energy.
Source and driving energy of all beauty is difference.
Translation appears a the cornerstone of diversity – one can attain the ability to articulate Chinese thought but one cannot become Chinese.
Exote – one who manages to return to himself after having undergone the experience of diversity.
Theory is that there are no others only other places. We travel in order to get back to oneself. Notion of otherness is questionable because if postulates a common ground, which takes us back to Western thought of universality.
The ‘other’ makes it possible to classify all cultures in the anthropological museum except our own, for ours plays the role of nature.
We can defend diversity by making it a cherished value in our societies, i.e. establish it as a conceptual category.
A new vision called Altermodern and the Altermodern Artist:
It is time to rethink the modern and move beyond the period defined by post-modern taking into account the changes in the world, especially globalization and its economic, political and cultural impacts.
Altermodern – foundation of the emerging culture, a modernity constructed on a global scale through cooperation among a multitude of cultural semes and through ongoing translation of singularities.
Art is now being entrusted to bring us information about the world around us. This emergence, this beginning of a population of artists and thinkers choosing to go in the same direction, is an exodus as a result of the global world. But it is cognizant of the dangers of globalization.
And beyond this, the artist today has the job of envisioning the first global worldwide culture. This will take logical thought different than that which underlies capitalist globalization.
The concept of history changes from being a closed book to being continuously enriched. It then becomes up to the artist to appropriate and transcode this history for themselves. This process can take original and singular paths and make meaningful connections in the infinite text of world culture
Therefore, the artist becomes a semionaut as they invent pathways within the cultural landscape of signs without denying each one’s singularity. The artist constructs passageways that connects expression and communication instead of resorting to a overriding model of thought. There is no authority. The artists proceed by selection, additions and then acts of multiplication. There is no single origin but successive, simultaneous or alternating acts of enrooting.
In essence, the question of origin from postmodern is replaced by the question of destination – where should we go? becomes the modern question.
A nomadic type of thought, organized in terms of circuits and experiments becomes necessary rather than thought in terms of permanent installations, perpetuation and built development. And we must abandon any tendency to exclude certain fields from the realm of art. All is art.
Art then becomes a gaseous substance capable of filling up the most disparate human activities before once again solidifying in the form that makes it visible as such – the work (not an essence to be perpetuated).
Radicant model for the altermodern artist -
· defines subject as an object for negotiation
· develops in accordance with its host soil and adapts
· translates itself into the terms of the space in which it moves
· implies a subject but one that is not reducible to a stable, closed and self contained identity
· exists in the dynamic form of its wandering – it is movement that ultimately permits the formation of an identity
· identity in motion
Another prism through which to interpret the world that would be based neither on religion (gives meaning to everything) or financial profit (homogenizes); a mental expedition outside identitarian norms.
“Can we really free ourselves from our roots?” becomes the crucial question.
Singularity Versus Globalization – the essence of the problem:
The problem then becomes how to define singularity in a multifocal world. The concept of originality doesn’t work because it constitutes a precondition and takes us back to the model of modernity.
Per Segalen, it is important to discover or construct singularities and they need not be spectacular. They can be perceived by changing perspective and observing social formation more closely, i.e. daily life.
But Bourriaud argues, that singularity depends today on the initiation of an aesthetic event, through an individuals encounter with forms, a production of a new fold which generates an irregularity in the cultural landscape. Singularity constitutes a rupture.
An Answer in Creolism?
Creaolism - formula for blending, a mode of thought.
Despite the heterogeneity of the people, etc that compose it, a Creole culture, or dish or island possesses a genuine specificity and the blending produces objects that express a journey rather than a territory. It is a joyous practice of grafting.
