The Radicant part 1 & 2

jason rhoades


Kim soo ja


miltos maneta


mike kelly


Laszlo moholy


richard prince


Julie Mehretu


mark dion


Gabriel Orozco


-response-

Baurriaud mentioned that it is important to embrace the globalism and reconstruct the future of art that we, as the generation of artist who has willing and power, take such a responsibility to construct the form of art that is unified and accepted globally. As much as I would like to meet the agreement of his suggestion, I am very much disinterested about many altermodern artists that he presumes. Of course, we are living in an art world where things are in the melting pot. Today’s history, both socially and politically, affected artists to encourage juxtaposing different elements together. This juxtaposing action can be viewed as though they are literally duck taping different cultures together forcefully. Internet made everything faster and quicker and we don’t feel distant with other culture as before, and there is certain occurrence where different cultures are slowly breaking their boundary and willing to be harmonized. In the result of that, we might gain the singularity that can be communicated fluently to one another but we will lose the unique sense of its variety. For example, worldcup is a global sports festival that invites millions of people in earth to an event that generates every kind of emotions. It unifies everyone across the globe and creates humanism, what is important is that they celebrate the uniqueness of their own nations. How sad it would be, if someone questioning and creating an argument about the reason for such occasion. As much as Bourriaud tries to embrace movement of the art in global contexts, he is still talking about very specific group of artists that can potentially generate next post postmodernism which he already coined the name and that is altermodernism. I see this very ironic. It doesn’t feel truthful to me.

“We no longer live in a place where time is generous. The idea of globalism became the transformation of tourism into everyday phenomena. Technology enables us to have instant accessibility. There is conflation of space and time. We are haunted by the multiplicity and complexity. No matter how bad it might look, whether art is losing its originality and its aura or not, the fact is that we can’t go back. We are responsible for the future and should act on it.” Simply, this is Bourriaud’s interpretion of where art stands today. No wonder how precarious it looks! And radicant art, to me, does looks pretty precarious. Radicant art was born in anxiety.

Today, nothing considers as a “new” art. We don’t talk about certain art unless it’s THE game in town. I don’t think Bourriaud is any different than any other art critics from the past. To be against what is new is not to be modern. This is a fundamental idea that drives modernism and continues to breathe in same way today. Bourriaud, to me, is also carrying this idea with his support in the context of globalism. The only possible strategy to counter a new style which one critic detest is to jump over the previous style. I mean that is how modernism demolished realism, pop art demolished abstract expressionism, and so on. Now, where accessibility is only one click away that you have excess to any information you can pull, thus this infrastructure influence art and its environment, globalism and its radicality makes sense. Is Bourriaud trying to fix the value in radicant art with the name of althermodernism? Does Bourriaud think that radicant art rejuvenates today’s art scene?