The second part of Nicolas Bourriaud's The Radicant deals with altermodern concepts further with an increase in discussion of philosophy and and influential thinkers. It seems that this portion is less effective in introducing more concepts, but more concerned with elaborating the concepts already introduced to delve deeper into the meaning and relationships of the continuing conceptual themes.
Bourriaud starts to introduce examples, largely consisting of art work by Damien Hirst and Marceld Duchamp's readymades to point to how art has evolved to new places compared to what used to be acceptable on an intellectual level in the art world. This allows him to propose ways in which art might be changing in the present to become something new in the future and what sort of implications that the birth of web 2.o may hold for the future. Bourriaud discusses ideas of Walter Benjamin that were critical in the development of discourse surrounding topics like the results of image reproduction through mechanical means, which leads to the current question of what will happen to art once digital, and internet media so dominates our culture that those traditional means are all but forgotten. Benjamin argues in one of his most influential essays that an original image has an "aura" comprised of its unique, original existence, individual history and uncorrupted characteristics that cannot be observed by any form of reproduction. What will happen to such an "aura" on the internet? Can art made on a computer and existing only on the internet to begin with have some kind of "aura," or does it even really exist as an art object at all? Critics like Clement Greenberg pushed for art to be produced in its purest and most honest form, which was for him a reduction and emphasis on the use and demonstration of the most basic and essential tools of art. This led to works by the likes of Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, and many others to create a form of art that best embodied this minimalist sort of intellectual art. What might be the result of such a direction of simplification or emphasis on basic elements when applied to internet and computer media? It seems that Bourriaud poses his earlier concepts and conjectures of the Radicant to answer these questions and predict the direction of his altermodern, but I am not so sure it is convincing.
IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson
Bourriaud starts to introduce examples, largely consisting of art work by Damien Hirst and Marceld Duchamp's readymades to point to how art has evolved to new places compared to what used to be acceptable on an intellectual level in the art world. This allows him to propose ways in which art might be changing in the present to become something new in the future and what sort of implications that the birth of web 2.o may hold for the future. Bourriaud discusses ideas of Walter Benjamin that were critical in the development of discourse surrounding topics like the results of image reproduction through mechanical means, which leads to the current question of what will happen to art once digital, and internet media so dominates our culture that those traditional means are all but forgotten. Benjamin argues in one of his most influential essays that an original image has an "aura" comprised of its unique, original existence, individual history and uncorrupted characteristics that cannot be observed by any form of reproduction. What will happen to such an "aura" on the internet? Can art made on a computer and existing only on the internet to begin with have some kind of "aura," or does it even really exist as an art object at all? Critics like Clement Greenberg pushed for art to be produced in its purest and most honest form, which was for him a reduction and emphasis on the use and demonstration of the most basic and essential tools of art. This led to works by the likes of Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, and many others to create a form of art that best embodied this minimalist sort of intellectual art. What might be the result of such a direction of simplification or emphasis on basic elements when applied to internet and computer media? It seems that Bourriaud poses his earlier concepts and conjectures of the Radicant to answer these questions and predict the direction of his altermodern, but I am not so sure it is convincing.
IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson
"It is in my contention that art has found a way not only to resist this new unstable environment but also to draw new strength from it, and that new forms of culture and new types of formal writing could very well develop in a mental and material universe whose backdrop is precariousness...what might be described as a PRECARIOUS AESTHETIC REGIME." --Bourriaud (The Radicant, 85)
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I also think that he makes an example of how computers only serve to assist artists with better discovering new mediums and methods of creation, rather than being a the future of creating only through the electronic means of storage and exhibition.
NB seems to be a cheerleader for blurring mediums and breaking down hierarchies. The modernists clung to such things. Everything is the same?
ReplyDelete