Posted by Kirstie Beaven Exhibitions Editor, Tate Online 17 October 2008
Watch a video of Nicolas Bourriaud talking about the altermodern.
This week I met Nicolas Bourriaud, who gave us a preview of his hypothesis that postmodernism is over, and that a new type of modern – the altermodern – is emerging.
Here’s a video of the interview along with his altermodern manifesto and a list of the artists he is inviting to show in the Tate Triennial next year, which will explore the possibilities of the altermodern.
Is postmodernism dead? Do we need a new way to describe the modernity we experience today?
Travel, cultural exchanges and examination of history are not merely fashionable themes, but markers of a profound evolution in our vision of the world and our way of inhabiting it.
More generally, our globalised perception calls for new types of representation: our daily lives are played out against a more enormous backdrop than ever before, and depend now on trans-national entities, short or long-distance journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe.
Many signs suggest that the historical period defined by postmodernism is coming to an end: multiculturalism and the discourse of identity is being overtaken by a planetary movement of creolisation; cultural relativism and deconstruction, substituted for modernist universalism, give us no weapons against the twofold threat of uniformity and mass culture and traditionalist, far-right, withdrawal.
The times seem propitious for the recomposition of a modernity in the present, reconfigured according to the specific context within which we live – crucially in the age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodernity.
If twentieth-century modernism was above all a western cultural phenomenon, altermodernity arises out of planetary negotiations, discussions between agents from different cultures. Stripped of a centre, it can only be polyglot. Altermodernity is characterised by translation, unlike the modernism of the twentieth century which spoke the abstract language of the colonial west, and postmodernism, which encloses artistic phenomena in origins and identities.
We are entering the era of universal subtitling, of generalised dubbing. Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image weave between themselves. Artists traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs, creating new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.
The artist becomes ‘homo viator’, the prototype of the contemporary traveller whose passage through signs and formats refers to a contemporary experience of mobility, travel and transpassing. This evolution can be seen in the way works are made: a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form, made of lines drawn both in space and time, materialising trajectories rather than destinations. The form of the work expresses a course, a wandering, rather than a fixed space-time.
Altermodern art is thus read as a hypertext; artists translate and transcode information from one format to another, and wander in geography as well as in history. This gives rise to practices which might be referred to as ‘time-specific’, in response to the ‘site-specific’ work of the 1960s. Flight-lines, translation programmes and chains of heterogeneous elements articulate each other. Our universe becomes a territory all dimensions of which may be travelled both in time and space.
The Tate Triennial 2009 presents itself as a collective discussion around this hypothesis of the end of postmodernism, and the emergence of a global altermodernity.
This raises a number of questions that concern me.
If multiculturalism is to fade what am I to do as a person who identifies with a particular culture. Are you saying that my beliefs will no longer be valid and that practising my beliefs is a bit beside the point?
How radical is the notion of ’starting from scratch’ and will this include examining assumptions relating to the contemporary art establishment and its view of what art is or at least its view of what ‘art’ it is right to support?
Who are these artists that are ‘inventing’ my culture? Who appoints them and by what criteria are these appointments made?
When the word ‘we’ is used does this include me and if so on what grounds?
“The landscape saturated with signs” was always part of the Modernist project from at least the time of Ezra Pound’s “heap of broken images”. Ways of negotiating the superfluity of signs are also characteristic of the Modernist project. Deconstruction kicked away some of the navigating mechanisms, high versus low culture, good versus bad art, truth to materials verus kitsch and so on.
Just as Romanticism emerged from the barreness of late neo Classicism in the face of a resurgent cultural nationalism. So the successor to Modernism will emerge from its declining ability to represent the new world of feeling in the twenty-first century.
In this new world, art will proceed from a carefully shaped and modern-critical identity. Locality in language, symbols, music, social system etc. precedes the art and feeds its potency.
The totalising tendencies which are still present in the Postmodern version of Modernism will themselves seem redundant in a networked world where the node rather than the whole network is the key to identity.
The tactic of assigning a prefix to the term modern (post modern and now altermodern) is becoming less and less apppropriate; modernity was first used as a term in the beginning of the 16th century; should we not depart from the dependancy on such a term? I agree that our current mode of operation has shifted out of a post modern condition, but let us stretch our minds around the abilities of our transcontinental habits. We should no depend on such a historically steeped narrative. This is not modernity.
In championing ‘relational art’ Bourriaud appeared to have avoid some of the restraints in detailing an ‘ism’. However he has seemingly done the exact opposite here.
My life is framed by pain – constant, nagging pain. Using my body as template, I bring images of disability, age and gender into public space. Body/image is innocuous, ambiguous inviting instability. Abject slips into object, boundaries blur. The action I use to portray pain is the act of walking – of Traveling. As I walk, I move through pain – as walking is a painful act for me. I shift weight, lift, move raised foot, suspend in transition, place and repeat. I enact a phenomenology of pain. In Traveling, I, as body, am in flux. Those of us marginalized by gender, class, race, age, or ability live in partiality. The InterModern points, for me, to a ambiguous place. I still desire, as impartial, marginalized person, to achieve some totality in a unified culture. But I also acknowledge that such completeness would ultimately lead to an erasing of difference. So I “wander”. But this act is somewhat problematic for me for, as I travel, I take on very deliberate, painful and in some cases (un)necessary acts. Is reframing Modernism in yet another configuration not also painful and unnecessary? Does it not continue to refer back to that desire for completeness? Trans theory for example as well as cultural exchange may further add complexity here?
1. Starting from scratch is ludicrous but can’t be dismissed as it is and has been the language of protest, revolt, revolution. The history starts today, take on change: like in the International:
“Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.”
Like in 1968: the “history are us!” etc.
2. translation: creolisation/hybridisation has not much to do with translation the rational process of moving sideways (trans-late) meaning from one language to another. It does have to do with walking and trans-gressing boundaries. Cultures and identities are not bound to time or space the change adapting in constant processes of pattern recognition. So pleae RN Clarke keep practicing your beliefs but if you like and you find it at all inspiring you might pay attention to how those practices and those beliefs do indeed change over time and why…
Do you think it is significant that both ‘translating’ and ‘transcoding’ involve loss of information and meaning (lost in translation/ data loss)?
Your notion of reading an artwork like ‘hypertext’ suggests that artworks refer to other things: ‘chains of heterogeneous elements articulate each other’. So things refer to other things in a chain, there is no origin… Is this really any different from post-modernism’s notion of everything being a representation; never getting to the essence of things?
Finally, can we really be in a state of ‘modernist universalism’. Surely this is a very westernised viewpoint. Think of the internet (which you use as a metaphor). Someone’s experience of the internet in China is very different to ours in Britain as they have censorship. Also, can we really speak of global ‘creolisation’ when globalisation only leads to the spread of American English. Its not as if we in England are picking up many words from French or Chinese or African-languages. Is cultural-bleed two way? I doubt it!
Bourriaud writes that ‘Altermodernity is characterised by translation, unlike the modernism of the twentieth century which spoke the abstract language of the colonial west, and postmodernism, which encloses artistic phenomena in origins and identities.’
I don’t recognise that characterisation of postmodernism at all – ‘encloses artistic phenomena in origins and identities’? Isn’t this similar to the trick of many postmodern theorists who characterise modernism as little more than what Greenberg had to say on modern art, in order to make their job of defining the postmodern all the easier?
Imagine that the government has set up an institution to promote team sports in Britain. Imagine that the private sector is weak and that team sports needs an effective government institution in order for team sports to exist. Then imagine that those in authority in this institution are all appointed from a background of one particular team sport; other team sports are not represented. Those in authority in this institution allocate all resources to support their one preferred sport.
Further to this team sport colleges are set up across the country to nurture students with a keen interest in and aptitude for any one of a number of team sports. However the curriculum followed by every college teaches only the team sport favoured by the national institution. All staff teach just the favoured team sport and all staff career development depends entirely on expressed preference for the team sport promoted by the national institution. Any would be student who has great potential in a team sport other than the one favoured by the national institution can forget it.
Further still satellite institutions similar to the national institution are also established across the country. These too favour the same team sport as the national institution. All aspiring staff working at such institutions must only support the favoured team sport of the national institution.
The national institution, the team sport colleges and the satellite institutions all receive funding from the public purse and the public purse, of course, is funded from the pockets of all including those who wish to see every legitimate team sport promoted.
Now imagine that where reference above is made to ‘team sports’ this actually refers to contemporary visual art. How close is this to describing the situation today with respect to the Tate, our art schools and many provincial galleries?
With the advent of an increased awareness of the need to embrace multicultural thinking I had hoped that the contemporary art establishment would broaden its view and adjust its practice accordingly. I recently looked on the Tate website and, to my dismay, came across two postings to which responses can be made. These postings are ‘What is the Turner Prize For?’ and ‘Altermodern – a new kind of modern’. Both raise issues and reflect an attitude that I find very hard to reconcile with my expectation of the role of a public sector institution in a free, democratic and multicultural society.
The Altermodern video and Manifesto builds a case based on ‘profound history’, ‘propitious’ timing and the chronological linear development of art, leading to the elevation of an unaccountable group of Altermodern artists chosen from the one culture promoted by the Tate, artists who will speak for us all, dictating to each individual that their particular culture is being ‘overtaken’ due to the impact of contemporary communications and travel. ‘Starting from scratch’ referred to in the video serves to dismiss all other cultural tradition and significance. And to nullify any dissent and claim the intellectual high ground there’s the belittling and demonising of members of our democracy who take a different view. ‘Weapons against’, unthinking ‘uniformity’ and ‘traditionalist far right’ are unjustifiable terms. ‘Green ink brigade’, ‘spleen to vent’, disgusted Tunbridge Wells’, ‘decreasing attention span’, “just ‘so yesterday’” all from the ‘What is the Turner Prize For’ posting, further denigrate those members of our democracy daring to think differently. Incidentally successful Turner Prize nominations invariably come from within Tate networks.
The declared mission of the Tate is to ‘increase public knowledge, understanding and appreciation of British art from the sixteenth century to the present day and of international modern and contemporary art’. So what is present day British art? As an analytical exercise take the view that we are multicultural and that different cultures could be identified along the lines of atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist and others, and also recognising that there exist legitimate cultural aspirations other than wanting to be at Tate’s view of the cutting edge. The question then arises as to how the Tate is increasing public knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the visual creativity associated with say, more than one of these cultures. You could be forgiven for thinking that a certain sort of middle class secularism is pretty much the only culture promoted by the Tate, with Tate Modern a cathedral to this sort of secularism, accepting that there might be the odd token reference to other cultures.
And if you happen to be a young person from one of these other cultures, wanting to learn how to make contemporary artefacts that embody your cultural identity and belief, to which art school should you apply? Will any art school be able to facilitate your learning? The freedom to manifest one’s religion is a human right and it follows that this manifestation of religion might well find expression in the making of artefacts, where in order to fully express this manifestation of religion the visual language promoted by the contemporary art establishment is inadequate.
Interestingly JMW Turner spent up to half his career trying to emulate Claude Lorraine, a painter who lived some two hundred years before Turner’s time. Turner seems not to have believed that tradition was of no value or that he must only be concerned with work of his contemporaries or immediate predecessors. The Tate’s view is that art is about the chronological linear development of art, whereas I think it’s far more to do with integrity of formal elements and values and belief embodied in the art object. The Tate’s view is that art is about art, I think it’s about life.
What we need is a Tate and art schools that act with respect to the free, democratic and multicultural society that we should all strive for, where support is given to creative activity from all legitimate cultures. The Tate needs to be servant of our cultures and not dictator of culture, recognising that it is perfectly legitimate and desirable for individuals to achieve creative fulfilment from outside a Tate driven agenda.
Good thinking, Michael Clarke. I agree with your sober analysis. But Bourriaud has a good point, allthough it is not presented with full clarity yet. It’s just a fish in the sea. A fish in the sea that will swallow all our analysises because this sea is the present moment of perception and existence in space. The world is an icon, and the most important aspect for the future, is how to make this many faceted icon good, for infrastructure, and for tolerating differences. Like a glasspainting, of phenomenons and people and culture living side by side, as it is destined to be, anyway. With or without cruelty, injustice, ignorance, as it is now and also will be in a more and more overpopulated world, or with true cultivation, as a result of actual cultural and political strategy, well, that’s up to us, and of course sadly enough to market forces, media, and the few people who for some reason or another and quite temporarily, haha, takes the lead.
This hypothesis, as it is only that, has been bred in the incubators of the art world. Bereft of real visionary power, it grafts on a tired globalism to works of art assembled haphazardly. The almost indecipherable language of the Manifesto reveals only plain banality, with artists conduits for the banal travel journeys that the young, the middle aged and the old experience today.
Postmodernism has been dead for a decade – we are still in a hiatus. This manifesto happily ignores what is going on in the world today – religious conflict, and a wistful need to return to the traditional even in the West. The world is swinging back, against progress, against modernity. This man with his manifesto concocted in the dark-rooms of insular art-dialectic carries on with the same tired message, the 20th century myth of relentless progress.
Renaissance has claimed the supremacy of reason and human beauty and ended as Nazism. After WW II – the scared people made use of aesthetics of ugly. But this transformed us in to an ugly world as we know it today and took us on the same road of skeletons.
We live in a despiritualized, desacralized, strongly sexualized and materialized world, governed by the Institute for Public Opinion Research and marketers around the world. We are being regarded as Pavlov’s dog. Humanity has been transformed in a huge lab with over 5 billion Pavlov’s dogs.
Tate c/o Nicolas Bourriaud is desperately looking for its dogs.
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