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.)