artists and images for chapter 1

Image: Sarah Morris, Endeavor - Los Angeles, 2005

Morris, according to Bourriaud, gives representation to sites of power using vernacular from Minimalism.

Image: Franz Ackermann Installation view of Terminal, 2008

He's doing a similar thing as Morris - illustrating the abstract dealings in the mass-marketing powers.

Image: Paul Gauguin,

Where Do We Come From What Are We Doing

Where Are We Going, 1897In the section about Segalen and diversity this example was brought up to illustrate Gauguin's practicing diversity, even foregoing the traditional systems of composition.

Image: Mike Kelley, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites

Image: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

TH.2058, 2008

Here's an example of Postproduction: taking sculptures of Calder and Boursgoise and others only blowing them up even larger for this artist's agenda.

The Radicant Chapter One

1) I hate this book. I've already spent a whole semester at it. Okay, I don't hate what he's talking about, I actually really like some of Bourriaud's ideas about the problems with Postmodernism and his cues for the future of artistic practice. BUT - it's still hard to follow the academic vernacular and he makes statements that are supposed to be taken as premises and givens without backing them up. For instance, page 29 he states that cultural identities are being wiped out by globalization, and he brings this statement up over and over. I would like him to perhaps have given an example or two of this, to know how he defines this wiping of cultural identity, and also how this affects me the lowly MFA student at New Paltz. Apparenty this premise is common knowledge. But, Christina, if this is common knowledge, why don't you try to come up with your own example of the melding of cultural identity by globalization? Hmm, how about the generation next: every young person sporting the styles of clothing and music and cell phones and online profiles that have been proliferated through mass marketing? The youth focus on belonging to the larger group instead of practicing traditions of their native cultures - and I'm thinking not just in the US but Europe and Japan, most evidently. This is just me taking a stab at it, I want to ask people in class, and I also want to know what Bourriaud thinks, it's his statement after all. Maybe class will know...

Also on page 34-35 ish he cites an example of the colonizer over the colonized, forcing traditions over the natives who have been conquered. His example was in Africa, and then with some of those nations that were emancipated just became stagnant afterwards without the colonizers. Bourriaud says you can't just be anti-colonial, just like you can't just be anti-modernism all the time, you have to have something more. I'd just like to point out that the African example is awful, because those emancipated nations are taken over by dictators and tyrants - what's Bourriaud's solution to just being anti here? Martial law? The martial law of the Art Critics???

I'd also like to point out that whenever one tries to type "radicant," word processing doesn't recognize it as a real word. I'm just saying...

2) One idea of Bourriaud's that I agree with is bringing your cultural roots with you from place to place, and using them instead of burying them, and being open to allowing them to change.

I remember asking myself before when reading this book, do I really have any cultural roots? I'm a product of the suburbs, white upper middle class, the only traditions we had were the big commercial holidays and maybe you can count the religious parts of those. Is this considered a valid culture or a globalized one? I'm not sure - but it's not like I had my great grandmother teach me to make a cultural dish to eat or a pillow stitched with cultural symbols and materials.

3) p. 53-ish: B. is describing the radicant artist and says that they do not seek an ideal state for the self or society - I wonder if this is indeed not only a good/bad thing but if it's really essential for B's ideal artist? Can't you be a nomadic artist with an agenda for a better life for everyone? What about eco-artists? Is he not calling for a revolution when he says that the old system of criteria for artistic judgement needs to be rearranged, or dismantled? How can this happen when the artists don't care about an ideal state of open consideration of objects?

4) B's question, actually: why should cultural diversity be preferred to the sharing of a single common culture anyway? The answer is given a few pages later through a description of an early 20th century writer, Segalen. Segalen was all about diversity, and one of the conclusions from him was that diversity and multitudes are an energy source producing momentum to move forward. Without that stirring motion we'd be stagnant and like a lukewarm stew, not stew even, lukewarm mush. Segalen also said that the gathering of the nearly alike in the context of a series has the effect of establishing rarity/singularity as a distinctive sign. B cited Haim Steinbach as an example of this - putting things on a shelf that are similar brings out the small singularities that can be found in each. Apparently this even applies to machine-made goods.

I also enjoyed Segalen's idea that your identity stemming from the place you were born is all circumstantial and dependent on contexts; it's not absolute.

5) My favorite idea from B. is that the Postmodern art was always questioning where something came from, the origins - "where do you speak from?" The question now should be, "where do we go?" This is *gasp!* a Modernist question. There is a dilemma, or a trap to avoid to falling into: uniting with those from the same place or joining those heading to the same place, even if that place being headed to is hazy or theoretical. (The trap is the former option.)

Postproduction Q's

1) In the first chapter, "Use of Objects," B. mentions Michel de Certeau's views on the meaning of the consumer. "To use an object is necessarily to interpret it." This seems like a central idea to most of what this essay is about - how we are shifting our ideas about meaning, where meaning comes from. My impression on first reading this passage was a negative one, like what de Certeau was saying was that by touching or receiving a work the consumer corrupts it and alters it forever. After a while I realized this wasn't meant in a negative way, that this is an idea of change, actually of perpetual change and evolution that people are finding new meaning in. And I further examined why I would think of it as a negative, and perhaps it's a very Modernist way of looking at it - like the created work has the higher value and meaning, it's originality makes it purer, etc. Oh well, I guess part of me clings to the past. [image: Jason Rhoades, Tijuanatanjierchandelier]

2) I especially agreed with page 32, a general assessment (and an unusually very clear one) of Art and what it's doing right not. He says, "art tends to give shape and weight to the most

invisible processes." The one he's talking about now is that people are in a shifting of reality - it's now the Information Age and reality is becoming increasingly intangible, and Art is giving shape to how people are dealing with this new way of living the intangible. But it can't be done by simply making objects, as Art has traditionally done, but now it's the creation of experiences. He goes on to describe the open market as a model for current artistic practice. It's been boiled down to a coming together of things with history attached to them already, not the striving for constantly new things. It's become about exchanges, convergence of many separate things - relational. [Image: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled, 1992 (Free)]

3) It took me a second and third read to figure out what "detournement" was supposed to be. What is detournement? It is free access to all literary and artistic heritage (culture) for purposes of "propaganda." I also question if that's the right word, propaganda. Propaganda for what?

Anyway, any and all elements are open to not only correction and integration but also reinterpretation from their original meanings.

Then he gave the example of the DJs and I watched the RiP movie and understood all this.

[Image: Girltalk]

4) It basically all comes down to where we place value. Where is the value in the Art Object - in the Maker, in the Object itself, can it stand on its own, what makes that object successful, is it pretty, is it functional, is it making you think.................. blah blah blah. For me personally, I think about the word "talent." Where does this concept fit in to all of Bourriaud's talk? It's a skill that cannot be duplicated, both technically and perhaps intellectually as well, because some people can just think up some crazy stuff that's utterly amazing. This is, I suppose, the same thing as the artist's authenticity again, and people are asking what's going to happen with all this appropriation, is it going to spiral into meaninglessness and nothing will be good anymore? I would say that there is an innate sense of what's good, we all know what that is - it's all we talk about, we just give it complicated words - but basically we all know what is good and what isn't, what's cheap and what's handmade and which is better.

[Image: Haim Steinbach, Global Proportions, 2007]

5) Page 23 where he brings up Pierr Huyghe, says that the goal of this guy's work is to give the people back the control in the writing of "scenarios," the scripts that have been written for us to live our lives by. "Citizens would gain autonomy and freedom if they could participate in the construction of the 'bible' of the social sitcom instead of deciphering its lines." Um, isn't this the theory of DEMOCRACY in general? What our country was founded on? The people make the rules, not some supreme authority with no accountability making us follow blindly or else we'll be killed.... Is this not technically what our society is? People made up these scenarios, not the government. The people are the government - it does what we want to to, right?? People have rights, they have rights not to watch sticoms on TV! I don't want to get into a big debate, it just struck me as sort of ironic, that statement.

[Image: Pierre Hyughe, This is not a Time for Dreaming, 2004]

Walter Benjamin Responses

a) What is the “aura” of a work of art?

“That which withers in the mechanical age of reproduction.” The aura of art involves its historical testimony; it’s place in time and space, and all the references to that from its inception throughout its life. Tied to this is its authenticity, derived from these historical references, that it has an original.

b) In Benjamin’s mind, what effects did mechanical reproduction, such as film and the camera/photography, have on the viewer’s perception of art?

Because mechanical reproduction strips the aura from a work of art, in its place is a new reality composed of a plurality of copies instead of a unique existence. It also allows the work of art to leave its original context and come to the viewer in his own situation. Now [some] art is designed for its reproducibility – it is now based on its exhibition value, which is determined by politics.

As the human image withdrew from the photograph, its value became more exhibitionary and also needed context – like captions, like text in silent films. In film, more levels of removal from the art of the actor come up – the cameraman, the editor, etc. Also, both film and photos offer only on possible viewing of a situation, because it’s assembled through inhuman processes, and unless you were standing at the exact angle of the camera lens seeing and hearing all the effects, you would get another experience, like standing slightly to the left.

c) What is meant by the passage: “for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence of ritual”?

The ritual aspect of a work of art is part of its aura for it implies a social function, usually of elevation to the spiritual/mystical. Mechanical reproduction changes the preexisting need for art to serve this function – it becomes about the exhibitionary value, politics.

d) What mechanically or otherwise reproductive processes are changing the face of art today?

Well, I can speak for the specific art of ceramics – the process of mold-making and reproduction is changing the face of ceramics in a big way. In similar ways, it questions and undermines the traditions of ceramics that are extremely entrenched in the artistic hand and connection to the body. It’s even about transcendence. But the mechanical reproduction emphasizes the lack of human touch. It’s also gone beyond just the opposition in functional ware but to sculptural as well. An artist can make his own form and then make a mold and multiples of that and create sculpture with it. He can also get molds of functional ware and alter them for a sculptural statement.

I suppose more generally there is a furthering of Benjamin’s examples of the lay people becoming the experts through the mass accessibility of artworks. Now there is youtube and other such reality nonsense that are blurring the lines between what’s art and what’s not, who’s the expert after all and what does that mean…

Art of This Time - 2010

Title: Unfortunately my title isn't all too original, just like previous titles, but I think it's appropriate: neo-postmodernism. I call it this because the Art being made at this time is still pretty much postmodern, it still holds the anti- principles and still goes against idealizations and all of that, and it still utilizes all of the same tools and aesthetics. The only new thing I see happening is the subject matter (and occasionally use of as medium) of globalization and individualized mass communication.

It's main principles include dealing with the self as the world gets smaller. It's not about rejecting anything, in fact I see it as sort of "anything goes!" philosophy. It's all-embracing in terms of culture and race and gender, pretty much, but there are still rules in place when we try to think of it in terms of assigning value and monetary worth (another can of worms).

I've done a lot of studying and discussing Bourriaud's manifesto for the Altermodern art and the Radicant artist: He says that the new art transcends spacial boundaries and is all about the global traveller. The Radicant is a traveller, drawing imagery from all cultures and geographies while keeping his own in the down-low. It's drawing on all cultures without that nasty question of authority, does he have the right to, because now he does - everything is in play now that we have access to (and presumably the access to understand properly) these cultures and peoples.

When and How was it born: I'd say with the coming of the internet, the 80s, and it has grown as the technology and access to information has grown.

Postmodernisn Art Movement

Beginnings: Most say in the 1960s when people began using "low-brow" materials and questioning the status of Art - Duchamp is an early case, ahead of his time, who started this whole way of turning objects and Art upside-down. Rauschenberg in the late fifties is a key starter for the big movement, and Warhol and Pop Art began a big wave as well.

Ending: Some say that postmodernism ended in the 80s when the resonance of the term faded and artists started addressing the impact of globalization, which increased with the invention of the World Wide Web and proliferation of mass communication technologies.

Main Principles: To go against the teachings and preachings of Modernism, namely against purity of form, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality, and revolutionary. Postmodern questions the value of Art itself, and also it goes against the "avant-garde" and being visionary. It emphasizes the conflation of high and low culture, using industrial materials and pop culture references and tools to call attention to those discrepancies.

Main Aesthetics: These include multi-media, appropriation, use of found objects, use of text, use of video, lots of installation, performance art, happenings, images from popular culture...

Main Artists: Warhol, Rauschenberg, LIchtenstein, Kruger, Carolee Schneeman, Sol le Witt, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse

Main Critics: Lyotard (a theorist who I think coined the term postmodern), and Jean Baudrillard, and perhaps Arthur Danto.