modernism. damn and blast it. Maybe i should be a pre-modernist... (horsedrawn circus must be pre-modernist)
so science - enlightenment. 'improving'. modernism - evidencing progression.
40's - WAR - nationalism seen a s source of conflict. art became a-political. avant garde, abstract. art for arts sake. no sociallist realism (or whatever it's called) there then.
bauhaus 'form follows function' (is that like Wabi-Sabi? with it's lack of ostentatious decoration? but prob not with it's imperfect, flawed element i guess.) 40's were minimal, no surface pattern, laws insisting. fewer pockets. i guess the only detail was stitching... like my suit which is prob fake. (just had to stop myself bidding far too much money on a pair of womens land army breeches...)
I guess for it to be 'post-modern' it'd have to be contrasted with something - lux fabrics i guess.
mao suit is the ultimate modrnist. form follows function.
sky scrapers - arrived coz of post war bombing. utilitarian/funciton doesn't take people into consideration. - social problems arose.
art became ultra abstract. elitist. alienating.
postmodern contraditcts modernist style. rejecting straight lines and function with out decoration.
postmodernism is highly decorative, frivoulous, playful. e.g. dancing buildings in Praha, death to the straight line!
(what is post-post-modern? Maybe it will be pre-modern, is that why 'representational' is rumoured to have returned? If so, how is it different this time? What was before anyhow? The idea of being able to go back in time. re-dress the wrongs.)
fashion - postmodern references the past. picking styles from different ages and mixing. in art/theatre/music. So a bit like me taking the gramaphone into the street and playing the saw/spoons along with it while wearing, well, anything really, womens land army breeches for example. I flit from thing to thing so quickly, 5 minutes ago it was gypsy style, then classic hollywood, now back to 40's... that's probably a fairly post-modern affliction.
history now goes backwards too. no longer linear. I want to go back in time but keep my mobile.
the unheard histories (i guess that's a similar comment to how whenever people know about their 'past lives' they were always kings, queens, servants of such etc, not non-entities.)
distrust of theories and ideologies. All is equal in Art/PM
where next? scrappy enthusiasm? Non 'professionalised' like spartacus chetwynd? I'd say that's a go-er. Like the bike carnival - diy, getting on with it. a riot of colour and celebration, function over form (as in the function is to celebrate and we dont care if the 'form' is scrappy)
if i am a post modernist then nothing is more important than anything else - so why do we select some things over others?
almost impossible to judge as what do you measure it against? we are rejecting all values
thinkers:
boudrillard - the gulf war essays - the gulf war never happened - images on a screen (like computer games) almost no contact. not 'war' but an 'atrocity' us fighting people who expected a 'modernist war' where people could see their enemy. this is much more 1984 something. We are playing god with our technology. a mediated reality.
Derrida - the way we understand through language. if there's no word for it then it doesn't exist.
Foucault - prison - panopticon - guard watching... maybe - people behaved better if they thought being watched. power - beginners guide available. To Foucault that is...
alexander maqueen - references styles from the past and makes new things with them. so very postmodern designer.
post modern's not new anymore. all this mixing. referencing last season already...
identity is nothing more than a series of signs or symbols. it tells us nothing of the person. see the front cover of art review.
i construct an identity that means something to me? old/classic/trad as in before this modern/post-modern scourge (er, i think i like it really) eco/ethical, caring/social, spiritual, creative, serious/irreverent, modern, adventurous, diy/rebel/avant garde. what else do i think i am? can i construct one image to show everything i think i am? how many images would i need?
christina anguilara - speakeasy video. modern dancing, music, lingery etc. prohibition, jass ,black culture, debauchery. early film, race segregation. would have been highly illegal at the time.
so why do we think it's cool now? It's always the criminal element (the rebels? those who break rules?) who are cool - be they at the top of the pile or the bottom. If this is the case then that's why we have to move on from post-modernism coz we need rule breakers or ... or ... or what? Maybe if we have no rule breakers we live a nice settled life in the country where everyone's gainfully employed and fulfilled with their whittling and morris dancing.
Task: find an intertextual artefact. identify the text it references. how they function to give the work added meaning. Is there enough in Les Velobici?
can a post modern practitioners work ever be truly 'original'? maybe. We are all post modern now whether we choose to 'reference' stuff or not. But even by making stuff that's not like anything that's gone before, maybe we're referencing the last time that happenend?! Oh lordy.
bring example and texts it references to next sesson and be prepard to talk to the group about it.
is there enough in the crochet jacket? old form - crochet - craft, skill, . old medium - cassette. music diy culture, even the cassettes are 80's in the style of 70's...leather jacket - 80's punk referencing original - easy rider? rebel without a cause? where's it from?
No comments:
Post a Comment