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 21st 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
