7.3.10

The Radicant: the end, the beginning, or just another root?




Nicolas Bourriaud closes his book with a summation of concepts--being tied together? He addresses issues of appropriation, copy, and decisions. He makes an interesting point in that the fast-paced world of today continues to value time over space so that duplications are no big deal. people are borrowing and using shortcuts to produce, perhaps putting less effort into their own contributions expecting that someone else will borrow from them in turn. Is this the answer to the questions we have about the future of art? Does this provide us with what we came seeking when we picked up the Radicant? While all these concepts may prove thought provoking, I have to wonder if this is what is really happening. Have people really begun to abandon effort and craftsmanship for convenience and ease? I think some have, but I do not think that this is all we have to look forward to. Is Bourriaud guilty of these transgressions (perhaps innovations to him) himself? This book relies heavily on connections by nature, are all these references and thoughts something new, something old re-hashed to appear less lazy, or something different?

Monsieur Bourriaud, have I not been patient with you and your ideas? Why do you leave so many unanswered questions, hasty proclamations, and half-solutions? Why must you leave a bad taste in my mouth? Should a radicant ever really meet itself to become so entangled or neatly wrapped up and controlled by its own roots? Shouldn't it expand on into the infinite without the traditional closure of a book? If the author believes so adamantly in the future of art, the internet, mixed media, etc. and has such a great understanding of the direction in which these things will progress, why does he even bother with the obsolete format of a printed book? Why should he even publish his work? Why wasn't it composed and limited to exist solely on the internet, the vehicle of his radicant? Should I have obtained a Kindle and read this book through that lens to understand what I am missing? Why are he and his writing so obviously French and Franco-minded in a day when the ever-diverse radicant is drawing from whatever sources are of relative convenience, regardless of individual culture or perspective? Could not these views or exercises be demonstrated in a more complete way? How limited is the thought of one who extols limitless possibilities? How does one provide so little when one purports to have so many explanations?

Ok, N.B.
Good talk.



IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson

p.s. Radicant, Altermodernism, Post-post, etc. would it be too much to ask that some better terminology be developed? Words need not be slaves to the concepts they describe.




1 comment:

  1. Isn't he trying to articulate what it is he is observing in art and lend insight into how it all came about?

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