10 years pricking the art voodoo doll 2005-2015

Postmodernism is dead? Really?

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http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm

Altermodern
Manifesto
POSTMODERNISM IS DEAD
A new modernity is emerging, salve reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing

Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

The Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain presents a collective discussion around this premise that postmodernism is coming to an end, and we are experiencing the emergence of a global altermodernity.

Nicolas Bourriaud
Altermodern – Tate Triennial 2009
at Tate Britain
4 February – 26 April 2009

Eyeblog review
http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=150

21 Comments

  1. Monika Parrinder

    So, are you saying it’s not then? You’re post is very cryptic.

  2. C.A.C.

    I deliberately placed a question mark in advance of writing a further entry..having not seen the show yet..a friend has seen it and said it patchy but not as bad as expected….as for Postmodernism…if it not quite dead it might be starting to smell pretty bad..

  3. Monika Parrinder

    HI, I’ve seen the exhibition now and it feels as if the potency of the altermodern idea manifests itself in the manifesto but not in the show. We are running our ‘pre-review’ of the Altermodern idea on our website and one comment in response to the show is this:

    “A famous philosopher – deleuze? – pointed out that philosophy does not get the art it deserves. Indeed.”
    http://www.limitedlanguage.org/discussion/index.php/archive/modernism-20-meaning-is-back-in-fashion-courtesy-of-mm-paris/#comments

  4. matosic

     
    Altermodern.
    when I first heard about this exhibition my initial thought was that this must be a continuation of that work made by the Chapman brothers when they defaced Goya prints with their juvenile scrawls; that due to the credit crunch artists had been buying up cut price modernist  works and altering them in some way. Adding an extra square to a Malevich or Mondrian, or a witty pair of spectacles to a Picasso. Of course such alteration of existing artwork owes much to Duchamp, if only he had used the real thing instead of that cheap reproduction.
    But no, imagine my disappointment when I looked around the turgid  sterility that constitutes Altermodern. The premise of the exhibition seems to reside with some random thoughts from Nicholas Bourraiaud, a French critic. The premise being that we live in a globalised world and art reflects this.
    There were few exhibits that caused more than a faint stir of seminal thought the majority being a rehash of the insularity common to most capital cities where art seems to exist outside of the real world. It is duly noted that although making claim to a global perspective the majority of the artists live and work in London.
    There is an immediacy of the central , and largest of the exhibits, Line of Control an installation by Subodh Gupta. A mushroom cloud comprised of stainless steel cooking utensils, this seductive material reflecting the well positioned lights. but then the dialogue stops, this is more theatre than engaged visual art,.
    Throughout this exhibition as with much work produced in these ‘research’ justified times all the work is quantified through the back story. Very few exhibits can exist  within their own capacity.
    Take away  these philosophies and  reasoned methodologies and there remains very little  visually engaged work.
    The script to this exhibition purports to the notion of journeys to the greater globalised world in which we reside. The free exhibition guide being the equivalent to the Sat Nav style of travel. The most expedient and straightforward functionality of getting from A to B, gone is the romance of  the battered road atlas, pages scrunched and bits missing, the  stain of spilt tea, testimony of the road side picnic where the map doubles as tablecloth. gone is the notion of getting lost and exploring, of discovery, of encounter, Sat Nav does away with the detail of landscape the character of place names, and indeed any sense of place, and all too often dumps you in deep water or down a dead end.
    It would be churlish of me to single out  the most despicable examples of misplaced ideas over philosophised notions of what art is or should be. Even the few works that I could engage with were let down by inadequacies either in execution or by  accompaniment.
    I enjoyed the Tacita Dean photographs, but the witty legends  labels etc. were for the most part illegible, perhaps this was to do with the post production  enlargement of the postcards  by 300% or so. What might have been readable on a smaller scale became blurred beyond comprehension. perhaps this was intentional, it was not mentioned in the back story.
    The Fedex boxes by Walead Beshy were in my humble opinion the best work in the entire exhibition. These minimalist cubes and the random line of broken glass, exhibited upon their transport cartons  were a testimony to  travel and the  flagrant disregard to care taken by this most esteemed of shipping companies. I am sure that  Fedex have a back story of their own to explain the  erosion of perfection within these glass cubes. Without their input the work would be insignificant and unaltered  and therefore a cheap imitation of the real thing.
    Incidentally this was not the only exhibit using packing cases Simon Starlings desks were also shown on their packing cases, might I suggest that these too be sent by Fedex next time!
    however Beshys boxes were let down by  the rather inane, very large photos purporting to come from X ray machines at airports, these were extraordinary in their lack of content and unfortunately reminded me of Ikea decorative wall panels.
    Gustav Metzgers Liquid Crystal Environment were beautiful, I am not sure what they had to do with the premise for the exhibition but the sheer quality of this work made up for this lack of continuity.
     
    And of the rest of the exhibition…… I remain unimpressed and for the most part There were some buckets covered in paint, yes some good old fashioned paint. which were okay, Loris Greauds installation Tremors where Forever was sensational, in that it created a sensation well a vibration underfoot. not particularly visual, but much art gave up on visual some time ago.
    Overall however there did seem to be a lack of colour throughout this exhibition, perhaps presciently  reflecting the bleak times ahead.

  5. Tiggy

    Postmodernity is a colourful spectral floodgate of infinate possibilities; it embraces multiplicity, hybridization, and creolisation of language, symbols, archetypes, objects, belief-systems and so fourth; It is a floodgate of new and exciting ideas, discourse and creative actualisation, brought on by our current and increasing global interconnectivity & hyperreality, which followed the black & white prison of Modernism. Postmodernity is neverending in it’s possibilities and potentially its creative force can only be slowed, destroyed or controlled by martial law, be it visible (e.g. Copyright laws) or even invisible (e.g. China’s net policing). So it seems that Bourriaud, with his psuedo-movement “Alter Modernity” simply coined the term as a reaction to feeling somewhat ‘lost’ in this aforementioned flood; a fear of the unknown; desiring a more concrete structure with which to regard other artists, himself and his concept of the world. Postmodernity, when given freedom to grow & evolve, is, afterall, neverending & often plays out in ambigious form, in spacial dimentions & locations that move and are difficult to monitor; And this scares people. No wonder the government wish to introduce ID cards. We are everywhere all at once.

  6. Tiggy

    The curator an admirer of Baudrillard and Foucault defines the new “ism as follows:-

    * “Altermodernism can be defined as that moment when it became possible for us to produce something that made sense starting from an assumed heterochrony (Def: a developmental change in the timing of events), that is, from a vision of human history as constituted of multiple temporalities, disdaining the nostalgia for the avant-garde and indeed for any kind of era – a positive vision of chaos and complexity”

  7. Tiggy

    http://arterials.blogspot.com/2009/02/alter-modernism.html

    ” The Curator suggests that Post-Modernism endeavoured to answer the question “Where am I from?” “Altermodernism, thanks to the Internet, means we need no longer define ourselves within traditional boundaries. The artist is a wanderer, drifting about in space and time, drawing from a vast, fluid fund of collective ideas. And his or her work is far less about a single finished object than about continuing processes of development and connection in which one thing always seems to be leading to the next. ”

    If Postmodernism is founded on Modernism, and still holds dear its reverence for innovation, albeit with more vision & infinate routes to potentially take – many of them seemingly back into a past time with nostalgia – then Altermodernism is a realisation that we need no longer be pushed forward by a floodgate bandwagon towards specific socio-political-cultural intergration with specific sites admist the reality available to us (e.g. facebook, myspace, deviantart) but instead hold the power to pave our *own* unique path in this Postmodern chaos. Altermodernism, therfore, is an attempt at standing our own flags wherever we wish to place them. Effectively, Altermodernism is the equivalent of growing (but not quite having) wings. Transhumanism – potentially net hardwired into our brains ie. cyborg, a new model of human – it wold seem, is our ultimate future.

  8. Tiggy

    http://www.jotta.com/jotta/article?no=2714

    Re: Altermodernism exhibition, Tate Britain Triennial –

    “Bob & Roberta Smith. First thing in the show” … “it was a very informative description of an innovative concept. An ongoing installation, constantly reinventing itself and moulding itself to its environment and the people around it”. Jane Trustram.

    Surely a true expression of Altermodernism would be a more permanent and ongoing exhibition – perhaps installed in Tate Britain – whoes individual pieces & installations evolve overtime, and can be visited intermittently by the public? This would best express the temporal disposition of the artist at any one time. Arguably, holding an artist hostage, as it were, in a single location – however diverse their inspirations drawn from a globally interconnected lifestyle – would give their work a site-specic context, therfore altering and limiting a possibly richer multiplicity of interpretations & meanings. Paradoxically, this would imply that the purest expression of Altermodernism – which would be an evolving, and also constantly moving, art piece/installation, at unpredictable & varying speeds – would be almost impossible to track, follow and absorb; members of the public limited by time, money and energy. A pure Altermodernism piece is truly an enigma of space and time.

  9. Tiggy

    http://www.freebase.com/view/en/alter-modernism

    “Alter-Modernism is a neologism used by Filip Erceg. It is an analogy to the term Alterglobalism and is supposed to be an alternative to Post-Modernist nihilism. Many are hailing Alter-Modernism as the succeeding heir of Post-Modernism”.

    Postmoderism asserts with it’s love of subjective viewpoints, the notion that true universal ‘objectivity’ can never be created; for reality is but a fragmented jigsaw, and history is but a collection of stories to reflect upon with notalgia ie. there is no such thing as ‘fact’. The fluid foundations of Postmodernism can often be interpreted as pulling a carpet from underneath us; we might slip and fall deep into the chaos. Living in a Postmodern age is much a balancing act, with little that’s solid to hold on to; terrifying grasping climbing rungs that evolve into shapes we can’t grip; we learn to be selective, and to be changeable; we adapt. Those that don’t learn to adapt, or simply ‘give up’ trying, are left behind, slip, and are carried in forward by a current that changes direction & speed; Nihilism is a possible outcome of Postmodernity, but not necessarily. I look to Altermodernity to give us hope and example that we can not only singularly paddle or surf our own path in this complex hyppereal chaos, but can collectively jump aboard Noah’s armada of speedboats, wear an honest, neo-sincere smile and have some fun.

  10. Paul M

    i have noted that in most discursive text about Altermodern there is much talk about Post modernism, French philosophers and so on which is fine. However what much of this does is simply deflect from the main issue the visual art. Altermodern is a title plain and simple, It is a title that is supported by a critical theory and the art work seems to be there to support this “new art movement”.
    The exhibition if experienced purely from a visual point of view, the best way to experience visual art in my mind, does little to indicate a new era of art.
    The simple fact is that much of the work in this show is rather tedious

  11. Tiggy

    In my opinion, Altermodernism is defined by ‘motion’ and the power, ability and will to navigate ones own unique path through the chaos of Postmodern terrain; it is the equivalent of standing a flag – or series of flags – admist this multidirectional information flow, in order to bind it to a time line, with the desire to create meaning; lest it be overwhelming, for now a Postmodernist age is seeded, it’s possibilities in terms of ‘hybridisation’ are close to infinate. Altermodernism is webbed with an accidently-nostalgic simulcrum of references, but unlike Postmodernism, works on a completely autopiloted subconscious level, with its roots firmly set in a foundation of sensory (& conceptual) diversity and global connectivity, without direct & conscious references to the past. Altermodernism, an extension of Postmoderism, is all about the ‘now’. Altermodernism isn’t concerned with the (occasionally) tedious mechanics of ‘referencing’ the old; if the content or style of a media looks like something that’s already been done, this is purely co-incidental! Altermodernism doesn’t defend it’s cliches, it simple wants to have fun. Altermodernism embodies the essence of what it means to be alive; it is almost sentient & animalistic in its instinctive sperm-like journey towards an egg-flag that keeps on moving at intervals; a sexy chase for personal meaning; more a treasure hunt than a hunt; more a dance than a walk; Altermodernism revels in the journey, not the destination. If Postmodernism was an explosion of colour & style whoes sphere keeps expanding in infinate space, then Altermodernism is a winged weave through this reality along a sometimes-unpredicatable and unique trajectory.

    I’ll reply to the other comments in a second :).

  12. Tiggy

    “But no, imagine my disappointment when I looked around the turgid sterility that constitutes Altermodern. The premise of the exhibition seems to reside with some random thoughts from Nicholas Bourraiaud, a French critic. The premise being that we live in a globalised world and art reflects this.” Matosic.

    I’m taking an Altermodernist-flavoured viewpoint of allowing my opinions to evolve in reaction to reading various comments I’m reading. Whilst I enjoyed some of the pieces at the exhibition, I did find them rather outdated or cliched; certainly I didn’t feel anything new was being said. Nathaniel Mellon’s installation & performace work “Giantbum 2008” for example, was too predictable in its ironic wordplay & absurdist paradoxes; an obvious (possibly unintended reference to the Nihilistic madness mentality expressed in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting For Goddot”. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it certainly didn’t strike me as being a ‘Altermodernist’ piece. Although witty, it’s philosophy was very much a depressing “Why are we here? This is all there is. There is no magic. There only exists the Other (Ploppin)” sentiment. It was Postmodernist through & through… because it acknowlegded awareness of a ‘universal objective viewpoint’ and exasperation – to the point of madness – in the face of not being able to attain one; focusing on each character’s subjective viewpoint and pondering the macro of what being or object they theoretically inhabited. To make this a truly Altermodernist piece, they would have had some fun with it; concluded that there was little chance of escape, and then experimented & milked the diversity within each character; identifying the musician, singer, artist and storyteller etc. among them; painting a picture with excrement on the walls, attempting at singing in harmony together, or absurdist experimentation with their combined vocals &/or sounds made by clapping, clicking, banging on the intestine wall, copulating and so fourth. Certainly most of the exhibition lacked something ‘new’ & ‘hybridised’ & experimental. The Altermodern exhibition, in my opinion, comprised of Postmodern pieces.

  13. Tiggy

    “There were few exhibits that caused more than a faint stir of seminal thought the majority being a rehash of the insularity common to most capital cities where art seems to exist outside of the real world. It is duly noted that although making claim to a global perspective the majority of the artists live and work in London.” Matosic.

    Agreed.

    “There is an immediacy of the central , and largest of the exhibits, Line of Control an installation by Subodh Gupta. A mushroom cloud comprised of stainless steel cooking utensils, this seductive material reflecting the well positioned lights. but then the dialogue stops, this is more theatre than engaged visual art.” Matosic.

    I need to read more on India’s history and current situation to ‘get’ this piece I think. There seems to be obvious references to India’s industry, domesticity and the mushroom cloud brings to mind war and the military.

    “Throughout this exhibition as with much work produced in these ‘research’ justified times all the work is quantified through the back story. Very few exhibits can exist within their own capacity.”

    Exactly! A plotting of a journey implies nostalgia – be it positive or negative or anything inbetween, which is a hallmark of Postmodernism. Modernism is all about innovation and never looking back. I saw little inovation at the exhibition, and plenty of looking back, and a need for referencing the past to derive meaning from each piece. This wasn’t a Altermodernist exhibition at all; simply a coined term to refresh society’s collective memory on the subject of global connectivity and highlight that every individual’s path in the context of diverse hybrdised information flow is ‘unique’ (due to its hybridisation). The photographs that comprised Rachel Harrison’s “Second Journey”, for example, were snapshots of what an individual’s brain might focus on and store, in a day’s walk about; highbrow art such a stone Lion statue, sandwiched between a tacky lowbrow plastic/wood statue of Elvis and a stuffed cartoon character; this a sequence of diverse photos comprising a hybridised sequence of images.

    “Take away these philosophies and reasoned methodologies and there remains very little visually engaged work. The script to this exhibition purports to the notion of journeys to the greater globalised world in which we reside.” Matosic.

    Agreed.

    “The free exhibition guide being the equivalent to the Sat Nav style of travel. The most expedient and straightforward functionality of getting from A to B, gone is the romance of the battered road atlas, pages scrunched and bits missing, the stain of spilt tea, testimony of the road side picnic where the map doubles as tablecloth. gone is the notion of getting lost and exploring, of discovery, of encounter, Sat Nav does away with the detail of landscape the character of place names, and indeed any sense of place, and all too often dumps you in deep water or down a dead end.”

    Agreed! Altermoderism, theorically, should be about fun and romance! Otherwise it is simply art for art’s sake, and loses its function in society, making Altermodernism a dismal product of nihilitic Postmodernity; much like watching cheap TV because there’s nothing else on, and it’s raining outside. Surely Altermoderism is braving a new and interesting trajectory, and dancing in the rain? It certainly, in theory, has the spirit of keep-moving-forward innovation that Modernism held dear, and the romantic nostalgia & fusion-diversity of Postmodernism. I’m still waiting with a positive, expectant & buzzing hope, for a truly Altermodernist artpiece and movement to spawn. Perhaps this exhibition is more a questionmark of “Whaddya waiting for? Mix it up!”; a call for a more ‘brave’ attempt at innovation, than a definative stamp of “These are Altermodernist pieces”. I am pretty certain that this is why the Tate allowed such an obviously cliche exhibition to exist.

  14. Tiggy

    [Please delete the one post before the last one.]

    “The Fedex boxes by Walead Beshy were in my humble opinion the best work in the entire exhibition. These minimalist cubes and the random line of broken glass, exhibited upon their transport cartons were a testimony to travel and the flagrant disregard to care taken by this most esteemed of shipping companies.” Matosic.

    I think a good artist says something in an interesting way. I found this piece – although an accurate testimony of an object with a past – boring to look at, and with it’s ‘fragmented’ cracked glass, definately expressing a Postmodernist sentiment, not an Altermodern one. The Fedex cubes are too clinical a symbol to engage me; perhaps a more personal or interesting object would have held my imagination, as something romantic and/or meaningful, to fully absorb the notion of fragmentation, time & ware. My reaction was more of a “yup, got it, next” than a refreshing or dreamy true appreciation of its concept or beauty.

    “Gustav Metzgers Liquid Crystal Environment were beautiful, I am not sure what they had to do with the premise for the exhibition but the sheer quality of this work made up for this lack of continuity.” Matosic.

    Beautiful, certainly; a tranquil yet exciting place to unwind and let daydreams flow. New and Altermodernist, however, it was not. Although the image evolved constantly, the journey was too cyclic and predictable to be Altermodernist; one could guess the next upcoming colour wash, by its advancement from the top left corner, spreading out over each square in waves. Gorgeous none the less.

    “…Loris Greauds installation Tremors where Forever was sensational, in that it created a sensation well a vibration underfoot. not particularly visual, but much art gave up on visual some time ago.” Matosic.

    I liked this piece. It seemed like 90s minimalism made kinetic and somehow more tangible to my senses; I felt the adrenaline buzz brought on by being so globally interconnected. However I didn’t really feel a sense of ‘motion’ that I would expect from a surposedly Altermodernist piece; the wires were layed out too clinically, not really reflecting the bubbling and messy trajectory of most people’s sensory intake, in present times. It was a soothing space to inhabit none the less.

    “Overall however there did seem to be a lack of colour throughout this exhibition, perhaps presciently reflecting the bleak times ahead.” Matosic.

    Yes! I noticed this too.

    Surely an Altermodernist piece – reflecting the diversity we are exposed to in a globally interconnected world – would be awash with colour? I recall few colourful pieces. Oliva Plender’s “Machine’s Will Not Be A Slave Of Man, But We Will Not Slave For The Machine, 2005-08” was very colourful, but a bit too ‘black & white’ in its thinking, which set it apart as a seemingly Modernist piece. I enjoyed it, and it’s caricatures of pretty colourful hippies & wigwams, juxtaposed against the mundane grey roads, figures dressed in black and smoggy industrial edifices. Alongside a deskpiece with pinned newspaper articles documenting the negative effects of the credit crunch, the message seemed to highlight that it is really only the “normal” world of industrial consumerism that is hit and drained of its colour by the recession; hippy types roam free, colourful and autonomous; their costumes appearing to be a hybridisation of world flags, highlighting the constant innovation & welcoming of diversity in their lifestyles.

    The other colourful piece that stood out for me, is Franz Akermann’s “Installation View” which was an incredible space to be in; very Postmodern in my opinion, it was pieced together from fragmented neon tangles of cable, fractures exposing arcitectural forms, and what to me, appeared like live television screens. The piece had a real Cyberpunk feel. The mishmash of colours shouted diversity, and the rotating square – underneathe which bottles of food from around the world stood – felt like a slowly turning globe, exploding with ideas & sensory stimilus. It brought to mind William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and other such films & novels; I could imagine it fantastic scenery for an EBM nightclub, or IDM loungeroom.

  15. Tiggy

    “I deliberately placed a question mark in advance of writing a further entry..having not seen the show yet..a friend has seen it and said it patchy but not as bad as expected….as for Postmodernism…if it not quite dead it might be starting to smell pretty bad..” Monika Parrinder.

    This made me laugh. I would have to agree.

    Postmodernism isn’t dead in the slightest. The curators of the Altermodernist gallery, it would seem, are up their own asses with their ‘theorising’ and haven’t bothered to scout around Deviantart and other such websites, or A Level studios (you would be suprised what you can find there) for some real hybridised reflection of today’s net-inspired diversity. Refreshing fusions of styles & ideas – artistic, literary & musical – are occuring all the time, and the curators have failed to discover these numerous artists; instead opting for popular ones, such as Mike Nelson. His featured piece “Projection Room (Tripple Bluff Canyon, 2004” was fairly uninteresting to anyone but myself who quite likes stumbling upon antique things in sheds. Along with the projector video on a man rattling on about Freemasonic symbols, it invoked a workplace of a hermit whoes world is flavoured by his choice of stimilus on the net, in a globally connected world. The message I got was, even when completely connected to the rest of the world, you can still have eyes only for one or a few selected subjects, and can, if you wish, perpectually live the past; for the past is available to you at the touch of a button. This piece, of all of them, really embodies the reason why the Tate allowed for such a gallery, under such a name as Altermodernism, to occur. It is a wake up call. “Hey! Everybody! Look! You actually have the power to do whatever the fuck you like! Experiment. Mix it up a bit!”

  16. Tiggy

    “HI, I’ve seen the exhibition now and it feels as if the potency of the altermodern idea manifests itself in the manifesto but not in the show. We are running our ‘pre-review’ of the Altermodern idea on our website and one comment in response to the show is this.“A famous philosopher – deleuze? – pointed out that philosophy does not get the art it deserves. Indeed.” ”
    C.A.C.

    http://www.limitedlanguage.org/discussion/index.php/archive/modernism-20-meaning-is-back-in-fashion-courtesy-of-mm-paris/#comments

    I couldn’t agree more. The manifesto is obvious, but vital… the exhibition, however, reflect wholly Postmodernist ideas.

  17. C.A.C.

    Lengthy Mute Magazine review of altermodern
    http://www.metamute.org/en/content/altermodern_marketing_or_movement

  18. Alan

    Yes postmodernism is dead. But altermodernism is nothing but a rebranding of bits of postmodernism. What’s really new is digimodernism. A totally different ball game.

  19. Stacy Alyea

    Finally, there is a definite term for what many of us have branded “post-postmodernism.” The Tate’s triennial with its digital manifesto embracing today’s global context is not just merely a fragment of postmodernism but a new movement which artists have been working in while hiding under the outdated label of postmodernism…Stacy Alyea

  20. Nolan

    Hmm, because digimodernism isn’t? I’m skeptical of anyone who has a vested interest in their own book and research, Bell Hooks would likely say the same. It seems to me that digital modernism is part of what has pushed the postmodern trends and ideas. That’s not really a new concept, especially if you study communications theory. I do like some of your ideas though and your attempt at interdisciplinary thought. However I really don’t think we’ve put our finger on exactly what post-postmodernism is yet… Although obviously there is a profesional/commercial interest to be the first to do so.

  21. Alan

    Hi Nolan, I don’t quite follow your reasoning in places here: “I’m skeptical of anyone who has a vested interest in their own book and research” – this means you must be skeptical of absolutely everyone who carries out research or publishes a book. You’re right to be so, but it doesn’t carry the debate very far. “obviously there is a profesional/commercial interest to be the first to do so” – if you mean that people like Raoul Eshelman and myself hold top academic posts and are raking in shedloads of royalties, then if only this were true! In reality, the professional/commercial interest lies in maintaining the status quo. Those who’ve clambered to the top of their particular tree want to keep that tree in luxuriant state – not to have it brutally felled.

    Digimodernism is above all an attempt to trace the balance of power in contemporary culture. It’s a description of the flows of influence in our culture. If it’s flawed or incomplete (which it may be if it’s seen in relation to the work of Bourriaud or Eshelman), it’s because our culture today is shaped and characterised in another way than that. My intention wasn’t primarily to add a new theory or a new concept, but to draw a sketch of how things are these days.

    Nice talking to you.

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