Always curious about the aesthetics of our contemporary condition, I’ve come across these articles that aspire to describe where we are in relationship to everybody’s new favorite closed door, the postmodern era (call it late ’60s-late ’90s).
Nicholas Bourriaud’s Altermodernism, from the 2009 Tate exhibition, is hard for me to get my head around—this mini-essay reads like a curator who considers himself an artist with a manifesto that’s a marketing tool… pretty blurry to me…
Alan Kirby’s Pseudomodernism read to me as novel in its attempt to differentiate the current from the previous in the viewer’s / reader’s perceived role as integral to the production of works / texts. Not sure how well this model scales across disciplines, but it’s new and constructive, which I appreciated. I’m looking forward to more propositions like this one.
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s Metamodernism read to me as pragmatic, though dissatisfying, since I suppose I carry the hope we are transitioning into something new… Their argument that the metamodern, as the synthesis of the modern and postmodern, has that end-of-history feel to it… The-future-is-basically-the-present-but-with-more-of-it,-isn’t-that-great notion doesn’t really inspire me to try to push it along… Admittedly, some days it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort to argue against this position, but it can’t be yesterday forever… can it?
If anyone has other essays to recommend – please send them my way! I’d appreciate it.
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