Radicant Aesthetics

I think the aesthetics of a Radicant artist is the same as a post-modern artist in that it is obviously not driven by any sort of underlying narrative or movement. The only difference is that altermodernism isn’t fueled by anger or reaction against art history. This precariousness is something that began with post-modernism and what Bourriaud is bringing forth is a new way of talking about it.

Bourriaud is also proposing that “The distance between things and living things is diminishing”(p94) Is this a reference to the ever narrowing gap between computer technology and the human brain?

He also talks about the Semiounaut, as a “creator of paths in a landscape of signs.”(p100) Who are these pathways for? If they are for us the purveyors of the art world these paths are unnecessary as we are already aware of the pathways by being members of the cognoscenti and creating our own paths within our own work. And if the paths are for the public then they are invisible, as the greater population does not poses the knowledge necessary in order to suss them out.

Another point Bourriaud makes is that “the artwork is no longer a terminal object but merely one moment in a chain.” (p106) This is also something seen since the early days of art history; When we talk about John Armleder deconstructing and re-constructing his work we see it as new because a new language has been built around it. But since the beginning of art history we have looked at works within the context of its relationship to other works by the same artist, and though at the time it was probably thought of as “terminal” it really isn’t if there is more than one work of art to measure it against. It is a different way of thinking about contemporary art but any work from any time can be deconstructed.

postproduction

The act of navigating through the art world by selecting different aspects and ideas and compiling them into something that we all recognize as something derived from the culture but allow to exist as a unique view.

Postproduction affects how my work is percieved in that it is less of a vehicle for ideas and more about the object itself, in fact my work champions the object and the act of physically making.

altermodernity

Bourriaud comments that when faced with art made by someone different from us, or of a minority we do not have the right to critique it because we cannot understand it, therefore we will become unable to attribute a value to the work. But isn’t it possible to acertaine intent, materials, and composition purely upon the formal aspects of a work? If we preoccupy ourselves with the content of work whose origins we cannot understand then perhaps that is why the modernists dismissed all other aesthetics and ideas in opposition with purity and utopia.

Post modernism is supposedly based in “respect for the other” in which we pretend to assign worth to the arts of other cultures, without challenge, because it is of something we cannot understand and instead of attempting to find a place among our own ideas of art it is labeled first by its country of origin in order to frame the critique through the lens of that specific culture.

Modernism, says Bourriaud, is based in the “root”, this is something I have difficult time believing as I was under the impression that modernism was about Utopia and Purity, and what about those concepts is concerned with origin? Utopia will not rise up in the minds of people who appreciate their current status and society, it is only when we through away what has been done before that Utopia can be achieved. Kazimir Malevich claimed that modernism there is a “passion for the beginning” and because of this it sews the seeds of the future, thus establishing the root. If we imagine modernism as being “rooted” in its own ideas then the metaphor holds water, then the disregard of other cultures and ideas that don’t stem from “the root” will not be allowed.

How is the work of Duchamp and Kazimir Malevich and anomaly within modernism? Bourriaud says that this work was produced outside the natural progression of art history and thus was able to “produce history”. Is this purely based on the ideas that these two had and how they were in opposition to the consensus at the time? Aesthetically the work seems very much in keeping with the “natural Progression” so perhaps it was the language they used to describe there art that made it different? If a readymade informs the future, and it is an object taken from everyday life, how is this not an extension of modernism and “the root”?

I don't really understand what altermodern work looks like.

drawing robot

Drawing robot

John M Armleder

sarah morris

Gem Manufacturing Company [Clips]
2009
Household gloss paint on canvas
84.25 x 84.25 inches

http://www.farwest.cn/page/9

postproduction

The definition of original is: not derived or copied or translated from something else. With this in mind one can presume that the idea of originality is only an idea, because when you disallow derivation or influence there is nothing that can be made with the label of original. Everything comes from something; this is true for all existence and especially for art. What is art if not a culmination of experience expressed tangibly, and that experience did not accrue in a vacuum, nor did it stem exclusively from the internal monologue of the mind. We are products of our environment and history, and therefore so is the art that we make.

Copyright of intellectual property assumes that an individual is capable of creating without the direct influence of their environment, relationships, or experience. This is a false assumption as there needs to be an impetus for any creation, and motivation comes from influence and ideas we encounter throughout our lives and is impossible to divorce our desire to think and create from the reality we experience.

The film industry is in financial trouble, because of bootleg copies of films being made and distributed on the Internet. Arguments have been made that this must be stopped if we want quality films to be made, If the film industry is loosing money then they will only make films they assume will be blockbusters and won’t take chances on more independent, fringe type ideas. If this is indeed the case, and interesting, thought-provoking movies are not cost effective, then perhaps the public will abandon the film industry for the Internet entirely. If the machine is no longer able to function then it must be upgraded or deserted.

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/051109/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june04/black_04-12.html

Process is the way to actually own any work. If one is absorbed in the process of creating something then the value is attributed to the individual. It won’t be possible for the act of making to be co-opted by the masses, they can copy the process but what is gained is different for every individual based on their previous experiences.

Benjamin Assignment

A) The aura of a work of art is perception of distance from a work, its inherent uniqueness.

B) Mechanical reproduction according to Benjamin was something that brought art to the viewer; it met the audience halfway in that it was possible to make works in massive quantities so that they could be brought into the home. This in turn was a process that extracted the aura of a work because it was stripped of its uniqueness.

C) Mechanical reproduction emancipated works of art by the negation of labor intensive, time consuming process. There is no longer a ritual to follow when all the work is done by a machine, the technical skill that was once primary, became secondary and the reverence of an artist’s position was diminished. Conceptualizing ones design was a way to adapt to this new direction. The ideas an artist starts with became paramount and the works became more and more abstract.

D) Some processes changing art are: rapid prototyping; 3D printers, Laser printing on canvas, digital photography, computer generated graphics, web sites, assembly lines, factories.

modernism/post

1.The Modern art movement began around the turn of the century when the imagery of painting became less photographic and more optical, its when art became more about what could be seen in the light and shadow than any actual objects. The height of modern art was when Clement Greenberg introduced Formalism and nurtured and promoted artists who became source material to support his argument of the evolution towards “purity”

2.Modern art ended with the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe, a modernist housing project that failed after a mere 20 years. This was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture and has been called the “end of modernism”

3.Modern art movements, after Clement Greenberg “established a theory of artistic progress” became the expression of pure opticality. There was only the object flat on the wall or a mass of space in a room. No narrative or referential imagery were allowed, that was not an evolution towards purity. Artists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollok are examples of pure painting, only paint and canvas, it is not a window into another space or symbolic of anything it is only itself.

4. The Post-Modern art movement was a reaction against modernisms purity, but more than that it was a reaction against art history, the rules of the past were no longer acknowledged by Post-Modernists. Anything and everything was allowed in Post-Modernism if only to throw off the chains of formalism and “purity”. Minimalists made huge objects; which forced the audience to engage the work. Pop Art allowed references to popular culture, perhaps even including popular culture within the realm of “art”.

5. niche egotism, I call the current movement this because there are an infinite number of pockets of artist communities, all of which feel they are making the real art. This probably started around the late nineties when the internet took off because it made possible about a billion more kinds of art and aesthetics and fragmented the population to fit into all these new little mini-movements.

modern art

Mark Rothko, 1968

Villa Savoye, 1929 Le Corbusier

Composition with red, yellow blue and black. 1921 Piet Mondrian

Barcelona Chair and Ottoman Mies van der Rohe 1929

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1966. Stainless steel and yellow Plexiglas. Six 34 inch cubes.