28 June 09 - 17:03FLUXHIBITION #3: Thinking Inside of the Box
Did you think Fluxus was dead? A thing of the past? Think again.
All the big names from the contemporary Fluxus art community flex their communal muscle in this extraordinary exhibition focusing on box assemblage. The FluxMuseum in conjunction with the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction has put together its third international exhibition focusing on specific aspects of Fluxus art practice. Works by artists from all over the world have been donated to the Fluxmuseum for this exhibition. Represented in this show are artists from the all parts of the USA, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Greece, Germany, Hungry, Italy, France and Cyprus.
The exhibition to be held during the Month of July (1-31) with a gathering from 6:00-8:00pm on Friday July 10th at The Gallery in the E.H. Hereford University Center at the University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington, Texas. This exhibition is sponsored by the Student Art Association at UTA, a student group that manages and promotes student funded, student managed art exhibitions.
This is the largest exhibition dedicated to contemporary Fluxus/Assemblage box artists ever assembled in the history of the Fluxus community. Box assemblage has been a significant art form within the Fluxus community since its early days. Inspired initially by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell, Fluxus box assemblage quickly became a staple in the Fluxus community to gather together small works and editions of works from many artists into group and individual box assemblages.
The call for this show got a big boost when Yoko Ono - who has taken an interest since the second Fluxhibition in 2008 - help spread the word this time through her website ImaginePeace.com and through her tweets. Even the New York Times picked up the story. In fact a number of works in the show are inspired by or dedicated to this seminal Fluxus artist.
The FluxMuseum is dedicated to documenting the contemporary global Fluxus art scene and assembling a significant collection of works by contemporary Fluxus artists. The International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction is dedicated to the collection, study and exhibition of collage, assemblage and all forms of constructive art. A catalog will be available when completed. Details online.
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12 June 09 - 11:42On Intermedia
Fluxus has always been notoriously difficult to pin down because it has never fit neatly into any category assigned by the art market or the art academy. I have summarized it as concisely as I think is possible into four parts:
- Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
- Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
- Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.
- Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.
Previous articles here have explored the idea of Fluxus as an attitude. But, what is meant by "intermedia"?
The prevalence of digital communications technologies has tended to lead to some confusion between intermedia and multimedia. I would venture that in the minds of most people, including most artists, the two terms have become interchangable - or the term intermedia has disappeared altogether. This is unfortunate as intermedia is not at all interchangeable with multimedia.
Multimedia is most easily expressed and explained through the medium of video, or in the corporate world, through the application, PowerPoint. Intermedia does not necessarily require more than a single medium to be expressed. Intermedia is not concerned with the number of media that are combined to exhibit a work. An intermedia work can consist of multiple media (multimedia), but can also be expressed through a single medium. The important common denominator of all intermedia is the intersection of different media rather than the number of mediums used in the final product.
One of the easiest to grasp examples of a single medium intermedia work is visual poetry. Visual poetry exists in its simplest finished form as marks on paper. But it is not just drawing since it generally relies heavily on text - but niether is it just poetry or prose, since it relies heavily on visuality too. Visual poetry is nether poetry nor drawing, but neither is it multimedia. It is intermedia. It is based on exploring the space in which poetry and visual art intersect. Cecil Touchon of Texas takes visual poetry to yet another level by creating visual poems on paper and the re-rendering them as paintings on canvas, which are made available through the mainstream art market.
Other examples of intermedia intersections are "sound art" in which elements of musicality and elements of visual art intersect, and result in work that is neither music nor visual. Sound art fills space like sculpture does, but it does not actually occupy space. It is appreciated through the sense of hearing, but it is not music or poetry. Video art can be multimedia, intermedia, or both. Video by its very nature is usually multimedia, combining audio, images, and time/motion. But to be intermedia there needs to be more than a combination of media - there needs to be an exploration of the space in which media intersect. Artists like my friend Nicolas Carras in France explore this through the video exploration of static images, and by exploring audio and visual elements simultaneously, but independantly of each other.
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07 June 09 - 16:18Fluxus Visions
Fluxus Visions is a new collaborative Fluxus book project. Fluxus Vision (http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/fluxus-vision/619464) was published in 2007. It contains 50 visual poems by Allan Revich (me), with 50 brief Fluxus scores on the facing pages.The 2009 follow up publication will be a collaborative event. Fluxus inspired artists and writers are invited to submit up to 10 visual poems, and up to 10 brief Fluxus text pieces to accompany the visual poems on the facing pages. Visual poems should be sent as grayscale jpeg images, 7 inches in width by 10 inches tall, at 300 dpi.Anticipated publication date is October of 2009, so files should arrive by August 31st to be included. All participants will receive a pdf version of the book, and will be able to purchase a copy of the book at cost.
To participate, sign up on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=87665369758)
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03 May 09 - 16:44Fluxus is Nothing Special
Ok... so Fluxus is special! But in some ways Fluxus should be nothing special, because the thing that makes Fluxus so special should not be so special. Confused yet? Let me elaborate...
For the past century or so, and especially in the past few decades, there have been only two kinds of "official art". Institutional art, and Outsider art. Institutional art includes all of the art that dominates the art market and the dominant art history. To be part of the institutional art machine requires artists to belong to a market driven, academy supported, and financially privileged elite. Artists can become privileged through personal connections with marketplace heavyweights like the major auction houses or through direct access to capital. The Amercian artist, Jeff Koons is perhaps the best example of an artist who used the proceeds from a wildly successful day-job on Wall Street to finance his initial entry into the equally lucrative world of so-called "major" artists.
A secondary route to privilege is through the educational academies. An MFA from a prestigious university and/or a PhD degree can lead to lifetime security along with nearly unlimited opportunity for exhibition and publication. Outsider artists are the polar opposites of the academic artists in some ways, but like them, can have their art deemed "important" by virtue of their ignorance of the market forces and theoretical underpinnings of their production.
Fluxus is outsider art made by insiders. Fluxus artists occupy an unprivileged middle territory. Fluxus artists tend to be educated (although not always in art schools) and knowledgeable about market forces, art history, and art theory. But becuase Fluxus artists take pride in producing powerful work that requires only limited resources to produce, often fail to penetrate either the art market or the academy. As someone who has been intimately involved with this community for many years I have observed that this state of affairs is not entirely welcomed by Fluxus artists - but neither is it completely unwelcome. Fluxus works is almost always do-it-yourself (or DIY in a small, close community) and the scale is usually small and intimate. These features of Fluxus automatically exclude most Fluxus works from the "blockbuster" super-sized, public exibitions/private sales extravaganzas. The artists that I know don't really mind being excluded from these spectacles; in fact, I think that most of them (myself included) would be decidedly uncomfortable if they were a part of them. On the other hand, Fluxus artists do not particulary enjoy being marginalized and excluded entirely from the market and the academy.
Fluxus is special. It is special because it exists not only in the spaces between media (intermedia), but also in the spaces between cultural practices and artistic theories. Fluxus needs to become something much less "special" (nothing special), while also gaining recognition and respect for its importance. If Fluxus were part of a living body it would be the fluid in the joints. The head is seldom aware of this silent fluid, but the joints sieze up and the body ceases to function without it. If Fluxus were a machine it would be the lubricating oil. Easy to forget until the engine runs dry.
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03 May 09 - 15:55A Book About Death : Matthew Rose
A BOOK ABOUT DEATH : 1000 ARTISTS CONTRIBUTE 500 POST CARDS EACH TO CREATE AN UNBOUND BOOK ABOUT DEATH. EXHIBITION AT THE EMILY HARVEY FOUNDATION GALLERY IN NEW YORK CITY.
OPENING: THURSDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2009. EXHIBITION: 10 - 22 SEPTEMBER 2009.
The Memento Mori is time-honored artistic tradition in visual art. This latest variation, A Book About Death, is being organized by Matthew Rose of Paris, France. As of this date (May 3, 2009) artists are still welcome to contribute. Memento mori is a Latin phrase, the translation of which means "Be mindful of death". Memento Mori projects and creations can vary widely, but they share a common purpose; to remind us of our own mortality.
Please check out the work posted on the Blog, and visit the project Web site. This promises to be a significant event, so don't miss out!
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28 April 09 - 12:56Laurie Simmons Comment for Collab Fest 17 & 18
Collab Fest 17, organized and documented by Jim Leftwich, occurred on April 8, 2009. On the Flickr page for Collab Fest 17 there is a really good quote from Laurie Simmons taken from her project at ART : 21. I really like her comment because it explains so concisely the way that artists see the world around them, and are inspired by it.
Laurie Simmons: “I think that artists are always doing research on their own behalf and for their work. For some artists it’s reading. For some it’s shopping. For some it’s traveling. And I think that there’s always this kind of seeking quality that artists have where they’re looking for things that will jog them and move them in one direction or another. For me, movies and books have always been research. Finding objects will always stimulate a series or get my mind going in another direction. I might be wandering around and see a figure or a piece of furniture or a picture that just starts me thinking about a whole other direction that I can move in. And of course that has to intersect with what I’m thinking about, my state of mind, my feeling about current politics or some psychological issue that’s pressing. I see that all as research, just having all the threads of your life come together to tell you where you should go with your work.”
The Collab Fest 17 page has more comments from Art:21 by artists Lari Pittman, Judy Pfaff, and Pierre Huyghe too. There are also some great images on Jim Leftwich's Flickr page, along with the comment above from Laurie Simmons. There is only a single image from Collab Fest 17 on the site, but there are lots of great shots of Collab Fest 18 (April 22, 2009) there. Jim Leftwich has been pretty busy putting together these Collaboration Festivals over the past years, and has about two years worth of images on Flickr.com.
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21 April 09 - 15:27Fluxus on the Web
Web sites come, and Web sites go - now is probably a good time for an updated summary of what in webland relates to Fluxus.
Fluxlist
Fluxlist is an internet discussion list for all things Fluxus. Fluxlist was launched in 1996 by Allen Bukoff, Ken Friedman, Dick Higgins, Joe De Marco, Jon Van Oast. Currently maintained by Alan Bowman, Ross Priddle, and Allan Revich.
The Fluxlist Blog
Intermedia web log for Fluxlist members.
Fluxlist Europe
Eurocentric version of the Fluxlist Blog, open to artists outside of Europe too.
OPEN Fluxus
Fluxus social network
Fluxus on Wikipedia
Fluxus Heidelberg Center
Ruud Janssen and Litsa Spathi archives and current work
FLUX-USA
A blog primarily for American Fluxus artists, includes many international artists too.
Fluxus Portal
Art, archives, history, and information about all things Fluxus. Assembled and maintained by Allen Bukoff.
Fluxus Blog
You are reading it right now. The link will bring you to the main page.
FluxMuseum
Museum in Texas dedicated to Fluxus. Curated and managed by Cecil Touchon.
Fluxnexus
Contemporary Fluxus organization.
37 Fluxus Films on UBU WEB
The above links are primarily intended as resources. I will be posting an updated link list of artist currently producing fluxus work soon.
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07 March 09 - 11:52Jimmy Robert : 2009 laureate of the Follow Fluxus–After Fluxus grant
The Follow Fluxus - After Fluxus 2009 grant for young contemporary art called by the State Capital of Wiesbaden and the NKV Nassauischer kunstverein Wiesbaden worth 10.000 Eurohas been awarded to Jimmy Robert.
Jimmy Roberts (born 1975 in Guadeloupe) creates photographs, collages, objects, performances and films that focus on process and transition. While analyzing the relationship between image and object, he concentrates formally on the issue of the point at which a two-dimensional surface ceases to be an image and begins to expand both within our imagination and in reality into something similar to a three-dimensional object.
Each of his images displays an object that is then developed into a spatial sculpture. Here, Roberts systematically explores its relationship to the human body. In his performance, inspired by Yoko Ono's CUT PIECE, he quite literally translates the action of touch and being touched into action, including both himself and the viewer(s). As Jimmy Roberts interprets the action, his upper body is not covered with clothes but gradually surrounded with duct tape. With each piece of tape the audience pulls off him, the artist successively exposes himself while losing pieces that quite literally and figuratively he has been stuck with. At the same time, each stripped-off strip of tape describes sequences of the press reviews of Ono's performance 1966 in London.
Follow Fluxus - After Fluxus supports young international artists whose work suggests ideas inherent to the Fluxus art movement in order to keep the art current alive. The establishment of the grant was inspired by the "Fluxus Festival of Very New Music" which took place in Wiesbaden in 1962. This Fluxus event provided the first real broad impact for the new art movement and started off what is now seen as the first international movement operating in a global network.
Follow Fluxus - After Fluxus
http://www.kunstverein-wiesbaden.de
ll\ NKV
nassauischer kunstverein wiesbaden
wilhelmstr 15
65185 wiesbaden
germany
info@kunstverein-wiesbaden.de
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01 March 09 - 21:32New and Improved Fluxus: Fluxhibition #2
Fluxhibition #2 Classic and Contemporary Scores, Instructions and Artifacts by Fluxus Artists Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Fluxmuseum Catalog for the October 2008 Exhibition at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center in Fort Worth, Texas. 6" x 9", perfect binding, full-color
http://www.lulu.com/content/6222084Works by Angelo Ricciardi, Antonio Picardi, Jamie Newton, Allan Revich, Lorraine Kwan, Gregory Steel, Walter Cianciusi, Yoko Ono, Luc Fierens, Jim Leftwich, Jeff Hogue, Rebecca Cunningham, Don Boyd, Neil Horsky, Larry Miller, Fluxdada, Karl Heinz Jeron, Marco Geovenale, Patrick Anderson-McQuoid and Tomas Schmit, George Brecht, Bibiana Padilla Maltos, Carol Starr, Cecil Touchon, Keith Buchholz, John M. Bennett, Reid Wood, Reed Altemus, Sheila Murphy
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25 January 09 - 12:33The Fluxus Attitude
The Fluxus artistic philosophy can be expressed as a synthesis of four key factors that define the majority of Fluxus work. The first of these points makes reference to the Fluxus Attitude.
- Fluxus is an attitude. It is much more than an art history movement, or a style locked between a pair of dates.
- Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to to see what happens when different media intersect.
They use found & everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
- Fluxus should be simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.
- Fluxus should be fun. If it isn't fun, then it isn't Fluxus
What exactly is a Fluxus attitude? Part of the attitude can be extricated from the three points that follow, but if these three points were sufficient to fully describe the Fluxus attitude it would not be necessary to include the idea of Fluxus as an attitude in a description of Fluxus. There must be more to it - and there is.
The Fluxus attitude can most readily be described by looking through the lens of Modernism, and its precursor and postcursor. Just as Fluxus is intermedia, existing primarily in the spaces where media intersect, it is also "interphilosophical", existing in the metaphysical space between philosophical ideas about modernity. Fluxus begins in a premodern identity idea in which there are no boundaries between the self and the world. Fluxus is simultaneously in the world and of the world. The Fluxus attitude resembles Zen (which was a powerful influence on many early Fluxus practitioners) and certain aboriginal/anishnawabe philosophies that place human beings into nature rather than beings who must conquer nature. But the Fluxus Attitude is more complicated than that pre-modern idea because Fluxus practices this premodern idea from a philosophical place that is fully aware of its inseperability from its own time and place in the midst of a primarily modern world. ...And this self-awareness simultaneously forces Fluxus into a self-referential, reflective and relativistic stance that is completely Postmodern.
The Fluxus Attitude is simultaneously premodern, modern, and postmodern. It is an attitude that can somewhat fall into any one of these three philosophical stances, but can only be fully understood through the interphilosophical lenses of all three x-modernisms at the same time.
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06 January 09 - 11:49John Cage, Wabi Sabi, and the birth of Fluxus
In the late 1950s and early 1960s artists were beginning to feel that western art was reaching a spiritual and philosophical dead end. Modern western art had exploded in the vibrancy of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s and through most of the 1950s. Then critics and artists became concerned with the concepts behind the art that artists of the time were making. Color Field painting and Minimalism were the mainstream manifestations of this conceptual shift. When combined with the machinations of the art market and its need for expensive commodity objects, art ended up being massive, meaningless, and expensive. What began as artists doing what artists have always done, creating art based on their ideas, ended up becoming a market-driven orgy of excess. Zen, Wabi Sabi, and the East-meets-West work of neo-missionaries like John Cage offered artists a way out. The Event Score happened to be one of the most direct ways for artists to hold on to their artistic integrity without abandoning the conceptual advances that art was making at the mid-century dawn of the postmodern era.
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01 January 09 - 14:00Fluxus Event Scores
Event Scores have become one of the signature artworks that have come to define Fluxus. On the surface, Event Scores bear some similarities to the Happenings that were made famous by Allan Kaprow, but there are some important differences. Kaprow’s Happenings tended to be long and complicated affairs, sometimes taking entire days to complete. The typical Happening was also a tightly scripted affair. Event Scores are nearly always very brief, and the instructions often deliberately are meant to encourage the score’s performers to improvise and invent their own interpretations of the score. There is a certain irony to this difference given that the term “happening” has come to be associated with the freeform hippy-fests of the 1960s in popular culture, while the much more freeform Events never had the same impact on popular culture.
There are several characteristics that typify Event Scores:
- Brevity - most Event Scores are short, even in those instances when the event itself has a longer duration; the score that describes it is usually very brief.
- Modesty - the typical Event Score concentrates attention on every day actions; like a Zen koan, by focusing on the mundane we learn to become more aware of the profound.
- Musicality – Event Scores are similar to music composition, the performances are similar to music concerts, and they represent the Intermedia intersection of the disciplines of art, music, poetry, and performance.
- Simplicity – there are seldom requirements for special tools, skills, techniques, or locales in order to execute the performance of a score.
- Temporality – a self-evident, and self-referential presence in time and space is an important aspect of most events.
Most of the artists who were associated with Fluxus over the years incorporated Event Scores into their artistic oeuvres. Artists for whom the Event Score was an especially important part of their work included Ken Friedman, George Brecht, who coined the term, and Yoko Ono, whose book Grapefruit gained widespread popularity, partly because of Ono’s association with the Beatles and with John Lennon, who contributed an introduction to the book.
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08 September 08 - 12:46The Contemporaneousness of Fluxus Products
Cecil Touchon, a contemporary Fluxus artist and gallerist, is currently organizing a new, major exhibition of Fluxus work. The work has been produced by artists who are working in the Fluxus tradition - some of whom also incorporate historical Fluxus event scores into their made-today work. Temporality has always been an important factor in Fluxus, and Cecil has shared with me a short article on the subject, that will form part of the exhibition catalog for Fluxhibition #2. I have taken the liberty of sharing part of this essay with readers of The Fluxus Blog.
When it comes to the history of fluxus it is best to think about and
study it as little as possible. History has very little to do with fluxus.
All products of fluxus activity are intended to be forever present and
should never be thought of as being a part of some historical moment.
If a fluxus product has a sense of being old or dated or historical it
may be seen as a limitation in the design of that particular product.
The design of a fluxus object or a fluxus score should always be seen
in the context of timelessness and to some degree transcend any
specific culture but be more aligned with pop culture on a global level.
If an artist spends enough time with an idea, he should be able to
strip it of any sense of being of a certain time or place...
...Many preexisting fluxus works will pass the test of time and scrutiny,
others will not. However, even the silliest of scores will find a
resonance at the right moment and with the right personality of artist
for whom such works will seem as if written with him or her in mind.
Cecil Touchon dec 26 2006
Stay tuned for more information about Fluxhibition #2 as it becomes available!
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26 July 08 - 17:07Fluxus on Wikipedia
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in visual art and music as well as literature, urban planning, architecture, and design. Fluxus is often described as intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in a famous 1966 essay.
Fluxus on Wikipedia
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07 June 08 - 11:25Ray Johnson Videos
http://www.rayjohnson.org/
Excerpt: The Ray Johnson Videos Sampler from Robert Rodger on Vimeo.
Nick Maravell has released all his Ray Johnson footage on a 5 DVD set.
The Ray Johnson footage in the movie, How to Draw A Bunny, comes from the Maravell tapes.
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01 June 08 - 13:46Postmodernism: A Response from Keri Marion
My friend and fellow artist, Keri Marion wrote a detailed response to my article, Postmodernism Revisited, which I have published (with her permission) in full below. I like her point of view and mostly agree with what she writes. My point about postmodernism being better described as "late modernism", refers more to philosophical relativism than to postmodern art and cultural activity.
Here is what Keri has to say:
"- Pre-modernism was defined by powerful external forces like the church and the monarchy. "Reality" was whatever the chief or the shaman said was "real"."
There's also the fact that we are learning creatures. The "Old Masters" were interpreting space as "reality" in the sense that they were attempting to depict the three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional space. This served both a learning purpose and a functional purpose of recording history visually. Of course, we all understand that the recording was created from one person's perspective, and therefore completely unreal or non-relative in Modernist terms. The Church and Monarchy had great influence on the propaganda that was to be displayed, yes, but truthfully it was the "visual image maker" or "artist" that created the work, therefore in reality it was completely up to (more often than not) "him."
Think Carravagio, the dirty-foot master! The only reason his pieces were commissioned was because he was so skilled at what he did - otherwise, he was more of a nuisance to the Church. Things don't change that much, really.
"- Modernism was characterized by humanist rationality - the search for "universal" truth - think of Descartes, Voltaire, Spinoza, Darwin, etc."
In the quest for learning and exploring, as humans are naturally driven to do, Modernism found itself in the midst of a technological revolution: Industry. Of course the Modernists started to explore their reality in a flat way. Why continue working in three dimensions when you can consider the medium itself, offering a new sort of validity? The Modernists, like every era, were seeking Truth. They were no longer interested in depicting pictorial images because the "truth" was that "this is a canvas" or "this is paint from a tube" or "this is wire" or any sort of self-referencing material is what it is and nothing more than that.
"- Postmodernism in my view isn't really "post" modernism at all, but a term used to describe late modernism."
I believe Postmodernism actually is Postmodernism. It is clear to me that the ideas presented in Contemporary Art (the genre, not the timespace) are, in fact, established from a different point of reference and in that Postmodernists seek a different truth than Modernists. In some ways Postmodernists can revisit the Old Master philosophy of "pictorial art" but then take it further: dissect it, rearrange it, use it in different contexts, etc. There are some crossovers in every era - some people working way ahead of their times and other people working way behind the times. Either way, one can clearly see a shift in art-making since 1970.
"1) Eclecticism - there is no longer the need to find the "One Right Way", or the Universal Truth. Every person has their own version of what is real. ***This is sometimes misunderstood to mean that all versions are equally valid*** I think that this is what you (rightly) object to."
I think this clearly marks the transition from Modernism to Postmodernism. The term I've like to use in the past is "metahistorical" meaning in Postmodernism we can't say "this is truth" or "that is truth" because we recognize the perspective. What is truth for me isn't truth for you. We have our own version of what is real because reality is conceived by our experiences. In other words, we see with our experiences, not with our eyes. That marks the biggest, most solid difference between work made today and work made 400 years ago. And yes, it gets a little muddy here and there because every era had free-thinkers.
I do agree that the definitions of these things are "high minded parlour games" but at the same time I think it's fun to discuss. Thanks for giving me an excuse!
Keri Marion
Make Nonsense out of Something
http://www.kerimarion.com
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13 May 08 - 20:23Postmodernism Revisited
There are several ways that postmodernism has been defined. One of the ways that it has been defined is as troubling to me as it is to many PoMo detractors. That being so-called "moral relativism". When human beings can no longer tell right from wrong we cease being human beings. I think that view is a corruption of postmodernism. Just because everyone has their own version of reality does not mean that each view is of equal value. If someone's reality is that it is OK for people to suffer needlessly - well my reality is that that person is wrong and should be stopped. But... for me postmodernism is mostly a descriptive term for the era that we live in.
Here is how I would describe it:
- Pre-modernism was defined by powerful external forces like the church and the monarchy. "Reality" was whatever the chief or the shaman said was "real".
- Modernism was characterized by humanist rationality - the search for "universal" truth - think of Descartes, Voltaire, Spinoza, Darwin, etc.
- Postmodernism in my view isn't really "post" modernism at all, but a term used to describe late modernism.
It includes two broad, basic, concepts.
1) Eclecticism - there is no longer the need to find the "One Right Way", or the Universal Truth. Every person has their own version of what is real. ***This is sometimes misunderstood to mean that all versions are equally valid*** I think that this is what you (rightly) object to.
2) Baudrillard's "simulacrum" - the copy without an original. This can best be seen in American television. TV shows an idealized fictional reality which people then emulate and which television then reflects back to them again. Another way of thinking about this is as a hall of mirrors, an endless reflection of reflections.
Beyond those two key factors postmodern philosophy becomes very muddled and confused as it begins to get tied up in knots. It becomes completely useless as a basis for anything besides high-minded parlour games. I mean once people start using rational, logically constructed arguments to "prove" that logic and rationality don't matter, the whole exercise becomes ridiculous.
From an artists point of view postmodernism is really just something to have fun with. Artistic eclecticism opens the doors to all kinds of creativity. Video art, sound art, language poetry, etc. are all examples of postmodern artistic expression. Also, since art has always tried to reflect back an interpretation of the artists reality, the simulacrum is already "built-in" to an artists life and, I think, always has been.
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28 April 08 - 21:20Ray Johnson
Ray Jay should have been on my list. I will get to him soon. In the meantime, you can read my earlier essay about him
here.
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