Discussion Questions for Art & Spirituality

Some questions to ponder about Art and Spirituality for the discussion on May 3^rd.

Eleanor Heartney starts her chapter on Art and Spirituality discussing the split between art and religion in the late nineteenth century.

Is there a difference between spirituality and religion? How do you define spirituality? How do you define religion?

Do art and spirituality ask the same fundamental philosophical questions (i.e. why are we here, what is the meaning of life, do we have a purpose) and is the truth they are seeking the same truth? Is it possible for art and the artistic process to be split from spirituality?

Religious symbols are a powerful statement when used artistically. Do they take the viewer out of the work and back into the world, as Kandinsky proclaims, and prevent the viewer from finding the inner truth in the work?

Can the inner spirit, or soul, or consciousness or truth be manifested in the artwork without resorting to the use of the symbols and beauty, etc of the material world? If so, how?

Can a work of art transport the viewer into a spiritually altered state of consciousness? Kandinsky writes about a spiritual vibration that comes through the work and becomes the inner value of the work. Is there such thing?

“The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secretive way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequential, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has the power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one.” Can an artwork be judged based on its ability to ‘speak to the soul’ as Kandinsky writes?

Can making a work of art transport the artist into a spiritually altered state of consciousness? Can the work portray the spiritual journey of the artist to the viewer on a spiritual level?

How does Kandinsky’s essay relate to Walter Benjamin’s article read earlier in the semester called Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and his theories on whether art has an aura?

Is consciousness the same as spirituality? The same as the soul?

Art Exhibition Review Criteria

My reviews of the Armory Show and the Whitney Biennial were written according to the following criteria which I have phrased as questions to be answered:

Whitney Biennial

What were the objectives of the exhibition?

How well did the exhibition meet these objectives?

What was the overall impression of the exhibition as I walked through it?

Which pieces of art attracted my attention? Why?

Were there any underlying themes to the artwork?

What was the final take away impression of the exhibition?

Was the exhibition successful in my opinion?

Armory Show

Did the exhibition meet the objective of an art market?

What did the exhibition show about art market trends in 2010?

What were the reactions of the people attending the exhibition?

Who attended the exhibition?

How was the exhibition different than in other years?

Was the artwork selling?

Was the exhibition successful in my opinion?

What was my final takeaway impression of the exhibition?

The Integral Creative Manifesto

My Manifesto On YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?pi=0&ps=20&sf=added&sa=0&dm=1

The Armory Show 2010

Every year the Armory Show hits New York City piers 92 and 94 with a mad flurry of exhibitors, viewers, limousines, lines and hype. I’ve gone to this show for three years and I can say with confidence that they may be the most interesting years in the world of the art market and of the Armory Show specifically. In 2008 I watched Wall Street money managers pay obscene prices for obscure art they didn’t understand but happened to match the Italian marble floor in their penthouses. I watched the art world watch in dismay and disgust as the art flew off the makeshift walls during these transactions. Then came September 2008. Lehman dissolved and the subsequent real estate Ponzi scheme came to light crashing the world economy. In 2009 a much subdued Armory Show slid into New York with space in the aisles to do yoga should the need overcome and a noticeable dearth of limousines at the entrance. The art market was going through a major upheaval in philosophy and in economic value and most were reeling from the thwarted expectation that the heyday would continue for a long time coming. As we all know, it didn’t and in 2009 there wasn’t a hedge fund manager to be found on the floor. Well, maybe they were there but they certainly were not making themselves known. So much for that marble floor.

With all this modern history behind it, the Armory Show rolled into New York City once again in 2010. I saw a much relieved art world that things were stabilizing and that business could continue as usual albeit at substantially reduced prices. The art wasn’t flying off the walls, but it was moving and as this is an art market, I would like to concentrate on this aspect in this review. I do not see the Armory Show as a global exhibition or as a concentrated museum alternative. It is not a biennial nor is it curated. I see it as a market, an art fair that is economically stimulated.

I started at Pier 94 mainly because that is where I was dropped off and in anticipation of a long day of walking was completely determined not to increase the length of my walk in any way. Pier 94 showcases the galleries showing really contemporary work, in other words, the less conservative galleries. Since this work has no name yet except maybe post-contemporary, it’s hard to describe what I was looking at. It seems that the name of the game this year is appropriation of American symbols and icons including images and figures created by former artists. This isn’t a new game but the quantity certainly was new. I saw a lot of work hinting at socio-political issues but very little taking on the big issues of our time.

In the art world, a red or green dot on the nameplate under a piece of art means that the work has been sold or is being held for sale. I didn’t see a lot of dots in Pier 94. I saw almost no dots. In fact, the only place where every piece had a dot was in the Gagosian stall where every Damien Hirst print or replica of his work was already sold. What a pun that many of his paintings are patterns of dots.

But in general, the faces of the attendees in Pier 94 were somewhat bewildered and overwhelmed. It seemed like they were looking for something to connect to in a chaos of mish mash. Everything was there, every media, type and form. I visited on the final day of the show and the aisles between galleries were crowded to the maximum. It was hard to move around and it took patience and perseverance to actually get close enough to the art to see it. There was no time to participate, no time to connect or interpret as the crowd determined viewing times. I’m not complaining, as I know the Armory is not a gallery. But I saw some interesting art and artists and would have liked to immerse myself more. I can imagine that this would hurt sales in the end.

Going up the stairs to Pier 92 was an adventure in itself. Only one person can enter the stairs at a time, a fact that is carefully monitored by an apologetic security guard. The result is a line of people that is reminiscent of depression era German bread lines. Not for the faint of heart nor the impatient and it certainly reduced the time available to view art.

Pier 92 is host to the more conservative galleries; the now predictable modernist art of Sam Francis, William de Kooning, Ed Rushka, Joan Mitchell and Franz Kline among others. For example, the Gary Snyder gallery has a display of ’60s-style abstractions by Thomas Downing, Nicholas Krushenick, and Howard Mehring which are interesting. The floor allowed me to slide into a pot of deep color and form. Missing but not missed were the glitz, neon and volume of Pier 94.

I have to admit that eavesdropping on the rich and their talk of decorating their second or third or fourth homes and would this ‘picture’ match was absolutely entertaining. I bumped into a friend that was purchasing an expensive Boo Ritson photograph at the Alan Cristea gallery because it would look good in his daughter’s bedroom (his daughter is 6). The Armory Show is not only an art show.

For the art lover, this section of the armory is essential because here are works that will be shown once or twice before they are purchased and sequestered away in a rich individual’s home or in a corporation never to be seen again until the estate auction or a bankruptcy. Although they are minor works they are interesting and historically revelent. I may never be able to afford such work but the Armory show and the art market gives me the chance to see it and for that I am grateful.

The Whitney Biennial 2010 - Not Pretty but Chaotic

I have to admit that the Whitney is my favorite museum and has been since I have had the privilege of going to art galleries in New York City. I like the size of the rooms. There’s just enough art to feel full but not overfed. And I adore the fact that between floors I step up or down in a dark limestone and granite encased stairway completely devoid of art. It feels like the Amuse Bouche that cleans the palate between courses, allowing me to enjoy the next round of gourmet delicacies.

The Whitney Biennial this year is a gourmet feast of contemporary art, mainly from New York City artists, and most of which I have never heard of. The cacophony of voices calling from each floor make this year’s Biennial a personal movement of reflection and statement.

The objective of the curators, Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, as stated on the fifth floor of the museum, was to allow the art exhibitions to create a bridge between the generations of artists and their diverse historical, social and cultural movements. The curators chose not to present the work chronologically but as an interrupted moment in time in an attempt to capture the zeitgeist of American art in this day and age. They gave the exhibit the simple name of ‘2010’, a title that serves as a marker in time and acknowledges the curator’s limitations in the impossibility of their objective. It also gives them an out in my mind when at the end of the show I felt unresolved and overwhelmed.

The exhibition fills all five floors of the museum but as I meandered systematically from the first to the fifth floor, I didn’t find a linear thought pattern. I did find themes on each floor that were more in essence than in actuality.

On the first floor were works that seemed to entice me further up those beautiful granite stairs. On the second floor the work seemed personal and intimate. A powerful and emotional photographic series by Nina Berman depicted the return of an Iraqi veteran who had his face blown off by a suicide bomber. The resulting plastic surgery made him look like a monster yet his young almost childlike finance still agreed to marry him. Berman documented the marriage and the subsequent separation three months later. The series felt complete and I wandered out of that section emotional wrought into the other rooms. In direct contrast, the beautifully detailed drawings by Aural Schmidt, a transplanted Canadian, are humorous in a dark underhanded way. Her drawing of a Minotaur containing renderings of beer labels, condom packages, cigarette butts among other largely male symbols brought a smile to my face although not to that of my male companion. Although the audio recording by Schmidt states that she likes men and that she had no intention of belittling them, I think she is back peddling which makes the work even more humorous. I found her drawings a highlight of the second floor and wanted more work as opposed to the empty space chosen by the curators to surround the pieces. I have to ask, do we need all that empty space between works by the same artist considering the chaos that a biennial inevitably creates?

On the third floor, the work felt more process oriented and I marveled at the creativity of process that many of the artists explored. Roland Flexner’s exquisite surreal ink drawings pulled me into the tradition of their creation. Taking the ancient Japanese art technique called suminagashi (ink floating), in which a marbled effect is achieved by placing paper on ink floating in water and then modifying it with breath, gravity and chance, Flexner created worlds of abstraction and illusion. On the opposite wall, Scott Short uses an elaborately structured methodology to create a black and white abstract image. The process begins with colored construction paper, which he photocopies and then he photocopies the photocopy until an abstract image is created. He then meticulously copies the image creating a large abstract painting. I found the methodology much more important and interesting than the result which says a lot about the artist’s journey. Given that I cannot go on this journey and can only see it from the outside, I question the relevance of the art to the viewer.

Across the floor was a large accessible box created out of silkscreened panels that allowed the viewer to enter via sliding doors. Inside were projected slides of abstract watery images and in the center a 3D animation of the bust of John F. Kennedy circling over a turntable. The artists Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher appropriated some of the ideas and writings of two rather unknown American illusionists Black Herman and Sun Pa and the result is a poem approached through abstract figurative elements. But in the chaos of work of a Biennial, this piece did not give up its concepts easily. In the background, blaring in an overly demanding tone was Marianne Vitale’s video work “Welcome to the Future of Neutralism”. In front of a collaged paper background and staring directly into the camera, Vitale issues command after command at the audience in a pitched aggressive voice that permeated the entire floor. No artist’s work was spared making it difficult to focus or concentrate, not a good environment for a floor filled with art that gave concept the highest priority. In general I found the video in the exhibition uninspiring to boring.

On the fourth floor, I saw statement after statement of the American problem of materialistic denial and dysfunctional aloneness best expressed in my opinion by a nineteen sixties Cadillac by the artist collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation, roughly painted white with national clichés projected on the windshield. A female voice recites a prose poem in the background. It’s a desperate piece and seems to go nowhere but to the area of complaint. Next is a room punctuated by Sarah Crowner’s canvas paintings in a minimalistic explosion backwards to the abstract expressionism and especially the color field period. The fact that Barnett Newman was hanging on the fifth floor was a logical disconnect. I wanted these painting to go somewhere else and I quickly moved through the room to find myself immersed in Charles Ray’s ink flowers. Now I felt I had lost all idea of the curator’s intent. Beautiful colors and sweeping lines creating flowers in an almost graphic design manner jolted me back into the art mental space after spending so much time in American issues. I didn’t want them there. And then Stephanie Sinclair’s photographs of Afghan women who had burned themselves to escape intolerable lives of abuse and devaluation made all the American problems and American colorful flowers superficial and narcisstic. I don’t know what the curators had in mind but it didn’t work for me because it minimalized the other artists works.

On the fifth floor is a collection of works purchased at previous Whitney Biennial’s and coming from their archives. Single pieces by the super artists Rothko, Newman, de Kooning, Hess, Barney among others crowd the room and feel disconnected and disassociated from the works on the first four floors. Again, I am not sure of the curators’ intent, but for me the result was a floor disconnected from the meaning and feeling of the other floors. Because the curators had chosen to display the works in a non-chronological order on the other floors and then to group the works by American artists from twenty to thirty years ago all on one floor was a jolt to the logic and intent of the exhibition especially as the intent of the exhibition was stated on this floor as well as a zeitgeist of American painting in a non-chronological manner. I would have preferred a scattering of the contemporary American masters among the new and unknown and feel that this would have served their intention. I think the statement of where we were and where we are going would have been clearer.

Was this Whitney Biennial a success? Most of the art wasn’t pretty and it certainly wasn’t accessible to the guy on the street. The works imposed on each other visually and auditory, without really relating to each other. I left with a feeling of irresolution and dissatisfaction.

If I had the opportunity to curate this show I would have made different choices and created a more logical and less chaotic exhibition, that would, I think, have been more accessible to the viewer. But this didn’t preclude my enjoyment of the cacophony. It just made me sorry for the artists whose work was punctuated by the screams of Marianne Vitale.

The Whitney Biennial 2010 - Scott Short

Nicolas Bourriaud - The Radicant's Done

I have one question and one question only - why is it so difficult to write about the final section of The Radicant? This blog is a week late and may never be read. But that's okay because it feels so good to finally write what I honestly think.

I don't want to comment on Bourriaud's last section because I am not sure that I understand the fundamentals of his thought and, to be honest, am not sure that it is completely understandable by anyone. After wallowing through the first two sections with only superficial comprehension, I refuse to give the third section, which is full of rambling discourse, disconnected thoughts and made up words (for which he only knows the meaning) all of my attention.

What I am left with after finishing the book is a feeling of superficiality, as if Bourriaud is caught up in the frenzy of the mass media market, the world of technology, and of globalization without vision or any ability to stand above this world and analyze it from an all encompassing view. In other words, his weltanschaung is micro focused; he's taken one element and made it into a universal and global theory. I consider this a huge intellectual faux pas.

His manifesto only takes into account a few individual artists out of thousands, only those who are responding to this mass media take on the world. There are more artists. Thousands maybe millions more. He's taken a very small piece of the pie and is calling it the current art world and 'new' art movement. His thought and writings flounder as he grasps for universal meaning from this micro view. Most annoying is his coining of the word 'alter' because it means 'old' in the German language. Now, even though the French have historically not been overly fond of the Germans, the Germans are still a major part of the global world and especially of the art world. If he is going to tag a 'supposed' art movement that he says has its roots in globalization than, in my opinion, it would be much better if he'd tag it with a word that works for all parties involved. It feels like a slight on the nation that brought us Bauhaus.

Bourriaud is caught up in his language (which feels like he considers his 'art') and it results in convoluted thought. He seems to have lost perspective as evidenced by his stating the obvious over and over again. He likes to think these are new developments when stated with academic force. For example, his statement "the artist is collecting signs and creating pathways..." has been true for at least several hundred years if not more. The only difference in 2010 is in the length, complexity and breadth of these pathways.

I find the discussions around his thought and writings to be supremely uninteresting unless we bring in some comparisons in logic to the discussion. Bourriaud is missing the forest for the trees, to use an old overused cliché which I must admit feels very satisfying to use in connection with Bourriaud.

The forest he is missing is critical. The chaos that he says artists are responding to is really a symptom of a culture floundering under a massive weight of irrelevant data, garbage data generated by a paradigm of thinking that is losing its grip on our culture. The paradigm created by the German philosophers of the 18th and 19th century such as the Descartes adherence to reason and the scientific method as law for truth. It is almost like the current paradigm is spewing out garbage like a squid spews ink as its final act when caught in the net. Data is not the only garbage being generated. We also produce massive amounts of physical garbage and moral garbage. And we spin around in this mass trying to find meaning. I see this everywhere.

This chaos cannot and will not last; it is simply not sustainable on any level. It is the final act, the climax of the old paradigm before it loses steam to new patterns. Therefore, to say it is the artist's path to interconnect this irrelevant data into paths to create meaning for the rest of the culture puts reader and thinker on a path of futility. It is the artist's role to see past the garbage, see its meaning in its totality, not as each piece of garbage relates to another piece of garbage. The path is beyond the garbage.

Brilliance never lies in complexity. It lies in simplicity.

Thank god we are done with this book.

Tara Donovan, Quotidian Object

Doris Salcedo, Quotidian Object

Sylvie Fleury, Quotidian Object

Liza Lou, Quotidian Object

Katharina Fritsch, Quotidian Object

Bourriaud, Radicant Aesthetics Chapter from The Radicant

Commentary

This section of Bourriaud’s book is almost impossible to understand without a deep knowledge of art created in the last ten years. I have summarized the section below for the purposes of understanding.

The concept that I have the most difficulty with is the concept of translation which he thinks will be the new founding myth, replacing the modernist myth of progress. In my opinion, art is and always has been an act of translation. I agree that this translation is more significant in the globalized world and takes on aspects of complexity that were not evident in the modern era but it is a progress towards complexity, not a new founded complexity.

I agree with his statement that art is now a journey and it is the journey form that defines contemporary art. We are a society that has discovered the nature and inevitability of change (which was always present) and instead of denying this force are finally embracing it to a degree. A journey is automatically initiated when the force of change is accepted. I see this as an evolution in cultural consciousness and it is not only occurring in the realm of art. It is occurring on every realm. I am not sure that art will stay in the realm of territory, topology, expeditions or history. I think it will journey farther into spirituality, anthropology and mysticism in an effort to demolish linear scientific thought.

The concept of a world without a master narrative is compelling, a world where trends coexist in harmony, where race is no longer an issue and origin not the end of the story. I think it is important to society that artists embrace this concept on a very deep level and bring it forth in their work. This is the real journey in my opinion.

Definitions:

topology – refers to movement, to the dynamism of forms and characterizes reality as a conglomeration of transitory surfaces and forms that are potentially moveable – branch of geometry where nothing is measured and no quantities are compared

erre – momentum something has when what was formerly propelling it stops

semionaut – creator of paths in a landscape of signs

precariousness – that which only exists by virtue of an authorization that may be revoked at any time

walkabout – ritual journey in which the aborigines walk in the footsteps of their ancestors and sing the country

Radicant Aesthetics

major aesthetic phenomenon of our time is the intertwining of space and time which turns time into territory

by spatializing time, contemporary art produces forms that capture the ‘territory’ experience through practices that are ‘time-specific’

thus, art today creates new types of space by resorting to geometry of translation: topology

Aesthetic Precariousness and Wandering Forms

the liquid modern society started around 1990:

· generalization of the disposable – lifespan of objects getting shorter, social connections fragile, labor contracts short – most unnoticed phenomena of the 21^st century

· short lived overtaking the long-term, access overtaking ownership, and instability of signs, things, and conditions

· trends co-exist without animosity or antagonism

· nothing counts as we are not asked to commit and nothing binds us and cultural environment marked by volatility (except proper names which increasingly function as brands)

· global capitalism creates multiple shifting identities within people

therefore, precariousness now pervades the entirety of the contemporary aesthetic

museum function relegated to the maintenance of a database of information as artists create art that only exists in one point in space and time

our modernity is developing on the basis of:

· the collapse of the long term

· within the consumerist whirlwind

· cultural precariousness

· weakening of human territories from globalization

No Fixed Form (Homeless Materials)

chaos is preexisting and the artist operates from the middle of it, their compositions born of general excess and in keeping with a precarious, cluttered and shifting environment

the average person freezes images with modern day technology, the artist sets signs in motion

Urban Wandering Form

many contemporary works depicting life in big cities

there is an erre from the modernist movement, some of that energy remains

the distance between things and living being is narrowing

modern megacity result of a political erre, which is the remains of the movement of socialization which has now given way to chaos – each of these megacities displays feature of the world economy in concentrated form

the artist of the precarious world regards the urban environment as a container from which to separate fragments while to capture the city means to follow its movements

precarious artists often choose to define their work in the world of criminal vagrancy and commits it’s most serious act of breaking and entering against our perception of social reality – it pierces the chain of reality, returning it to its precarious nature, to the unstable mix of real, imaginary and symbolic that it contains

we exchange objects for money, we live in this or that manner, but did you know that you could also do otherwise?

paintings, art, become a network of information, no longer a channel of monocular perspective (the painting is a window theory)

CODA: Revocable Aesthetics Form

there is no longer any master narrative, historical or mythical, around with forms can be organized – its a floating world

artwork no longer a terminal object but merely one moment in a chain

Journey Forms

journey everywhere in contemporary art but paradox – coincides with the disappearance of any terra incognita from the face of the earth

therefore, need experience of exploration more than image of exploration

what counts is the setting in motion of a principal, the activation of an aesthetic

journey sign of deeper development and has become a form in its own right replacing pop and conceptual art intensified by tourism and the internet

involves the construction of new codes that are capable of capturing the dominant figures of our imaginary universe – expedition, wandering, displacement

defined by an excess of information which forces the viewer into a process and construct his or her own personal path

combines the forms of the ruin (culture after modernist narrative), the flea market (eBay economy) in nonhierarchical and nonspecific spaces (globalized capitalism)

the ‘walkabout’ a wonderful metaphor for the contemporary art exhibition and as a prototype of the journey form

space and time have come to the point of merging and exchanging their properties

radicant artists construct their paths in history as well as geography – it is the present en route towards the past, in search of its history

1. Expeditions and parades

2. topology

3. temporal bifurcations

Transfers

contemporary art identifies translation as a privileged operation

in globalized world, all signs must be translatable in order to exist

translation is the founding myth that would replace the myth of progress – the artist’s desire is to become a network

Digitization

universal trend towards digitization – universal single system of codes, the binary language of computing – weakens the presence of the source, since each generation of image is only a moment in the chain without beginning or end

Post-Medium Condition

the aesthetic canons on which contemporary criticism is based is shattered by:

· value of instability against disciplinary stability

· choice of flows over territories

· decision to shift over various formats instead of the historical one

Artists

Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, Jason Rhoades, Gabriel Orozco, Bernard and Hilla Becher, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jennifer Allora, Guillermo Calzadilla, Mark Dion, George Adeagbo, Jeremy Deller, Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst, Bernard Lavier, David Hammon, Piotr Uklanski, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Beat Streuli, Jeff Wall, Francis Alys, John Miller, Marjetica Potrc, Kim Soo-Ja, Doug Aitkin, Kendall Greer, Bruno Serralongue, Agnes Varga, Richard Prince, Seth Price, John Armleder, Melik Ohanian, Abraham Poincheval, Laurent Tixador, Mario Garcia Torres, Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Mike Kelley, Tacita Dean, John Bock, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Majerus, Miltos Manetas, Matthew Ritchie, Julie Mehretu, Simon Starling, Joachim Koester, Jun nguyen-Hatsushiba, Paul Chan, Amri Sala, Pascale Marthine Tayou

Jennifer Allora, Radicant Aesthetics

Jason Rhoades, Radicant Aesthetics

Joseph Cornell, Radicant Aesthetics

Andreas Gursky, Radicant Aesthetics

Richard Prince, Radicant Aesthetics

A Journey Through the Altermodern chapter of the Radicant in order to gain some understanding

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.