283S19 Age of globalisation

 

Nicholas Bourriaud Altermodern Manifestohttps://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/altermodern/altermodern-explain-altermodern/altermodern-cartoon

A new modernity is emerging, 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.

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.

Nicolas Bourriaud

 

 

FINAL EXAM

 

DUE 5:05 P.M. MONDAY, MAY 6

 

 

SUBMIT YOUR EXAM TO ISIDORE ON MON, MAY 6 by 5:05 p.m. (1500 words total, 200 pts) Format: maximum, 2 typed, double-spaced pages; MLA or APA. I do not accept late nor emailed exams.

 

READ the attached Altermodern Manifesto by Nicholas Bourriaud, Curator of TATE Britain Altermodern Exhibition, 2009.

 

 

 

Each question requires that you return to the lectures, videos, class reading assignments, – which I will expect you to reference in your essay – but each question is open ended so as to accommodate your own ideas/research on the issues addressed in the readings. In support of your own ideas about the readings, you will need to associate those ideas with the assigned works you’re discussing in your essay questions AND include 2 or more references to text and/or supplemental references that are specific, relevant. (Include page #s for text citations and URLs for online sources.)

 

I remind everyone that those caught using large portions of any published research, including websites and audio/visual sources, that do not properly cite in MLA or Chicago Manual of Style will receive an automatic zero. When in doubt, CITE!

PART I

 

 

 

PART I: (Write at the beginning of your essay each artist’s name, title of work, materials, date and style.) 25 pts

 

 

• Compare Mierle Laderman Ukeles & DSNY. Sanitation Celebrations: Grand Finale of the First NYC Art Parade, Part I: The Social Mirror, 1983; with Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980 –83

 

 

 

Collaborative relations between artists and audience have become familiar artistic practices in producing a work of public art. Compare and contrast these two works noting significant similarities or differences in subject or site as well as any factors that explain the artists’ preferences (influences in the art world or encounter with the larger culture/s, politics, history, and/or society of the particular era or region from which it was produced).

Mierle Laderman Ukeles & DSNY. Sanitation Celebrations: Grand Finale of the First NYC Art Parade, Part I: The Social Mirror, 1983

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83

PART II

 

 

 

PART II: (Write at the beginning of your essay each artist’s name, title of work, materials, date and style. ) 25 pts

 

 

Compare and contrast Clark’s “Six Sensorial Masks,” 1967 with Hamilton’s “Malediction,” 1991.

 

 

intentions.

• Discuss the importance of each artist, of the particular work of art, the subject matter, the symbolism, its meaning, and the artist's

 

 

 

You would want to compare and contrast significan features relating to subject and style, makin sure to note any factors

background).

• explain the artists’ preferences (influences in the artt world or encounter with the larger culture/s, gpersonal experiences or that

Clark, Lygia. Six Sensorial Masks, 1967. Fabric masks, various colors and odors, with different mechanisms to affect hearing, vision, and smell.

Ann Hamilton performing Malediction, December 8 1991 – January 4, 1992 at the Louver Gallery, New York.

PART III

 

 

 

• PART III: (Write at the beginning of your essay the artist’s name, title of work, materials, date and style. ) 50 pts

 

 

 

 

 

• Discuss the importance of this artist, of this particular work of art and the impact of this work on future art practices. Provide a description of the formal elements of this work, the subject matter, the symbolism, its meaning and the artist’s intentions. Discuss the use of media (television, radio, newspapers) during this performance. Explain how this work demonstrates feminist values within the objectives and goals of social practice art.

Suzanne Lacy, In Mourning and in Rage (December 13, 1977)

PART IV

 

 

 

• PART IV: Bruguera, Tania: Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana version) 2009

 

Discuss the importance of this artist, of this particular work of art and the political/social impact of this work. Provide a description of this work: the subject matter, the symbolism, its meaning and the artist’s intentions. (50 pts):

 

 

1.        What materials and media are used in this art work in order to create social change?

 

 

 

2.         Is this work site specific and, if so, what is the importance of place in providing meaning?

 

 

 

3.         How does the work reflect multiple perspectives?

 

 

 

4.        #YoTambienExijo: A Restaging of Tania Bruguera's Tatlin's Whisper 6, 4/13/15

 

Describe the facts of Bruguera’s arrest in December 2014 in Cuba.

 

Discuss the importance of this restaging of Bruguera’s work in multiple locations

 

across the world.

 

Discuss the specific critiques formed in this restaged 2015 work.

Bruguera, Tania: Tatlin's Whisper 6 (Havana, 2009)

PART V

 

 

 

PART V: (Write at the beginning of your essay each artist’s name, title of work, materials, date (25 pts)

 

 

 

Compare and contrast Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow (2017) project with Mona Hatoum’s Twelve Windows (2012).

 

 

 

1.      What materials and media are used in this art work in order to create social change?

 

 

 

2.       Is this work site specific and, if so, what is the importance of place in providing meaning?

 

 

 

3.      How does the work reflect multiple perspectives?

 

 

 

4.      Does the work reflect or respond to oppositional movements, politics and/or social movements in another region?

 

Or does it actually mix issues like these that are found in extremes elsewhere?

Ai Weiwei: Human Flow - 2018

Hatoum, Mona: Twelve Windows 2012-13

PART VI

 

PART VI: (Write at the beginning of your essay each artist’s name, title of work, materials, date (25 pts)

 

 

 

1. Compare and contrast Shazia Sikander’s Parallax (2013) with Shirin Neshat’s Tooba (2002). (View the specified websites for helpful information.)

 

 

 

2. Explain why this work is altermodern (reference Bourriaud’s Altermodern Manifesto).

 

 

 

3. Discuss the importance of each artist, this particular work of art, the subject matter, the symbolism, its meaning, and the artist's intentions. Analyze the use of media and installation in each of these two works.

 

 

 

4. Discuss significant features relating to subject and style, making sure to note any factors that explain the artists’ preferences (influences in the world of art and in the larger culture, personal experiences, etc.) HINT: It is better to go back and forth between the works, indicating whether you see the same or contrasting effects and explaining the similarity/difference.

Sikander, Shazia: Parallax, 3 channel HD video animation with 5.1 surround sound, duration: 15 minutes, 10 seconds; Music by Du Yun

 

https://vimeo.com/218223303

Neshat, Shirin: Tooba, two-channel video installation, MCAD – 2002

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a3bCSA3E4A&list=PLEOpEwkB3KChiEL8Le8k3bC9zT8HXrWwc&index=92&t=0s