Thoughts, views, and questions...
a) Bourriaud makes an interesting point on pg 17 when he writes "Today's artists, whatever latitude they live in, have the taste of envisaging what would be the first truly worldwide culture." He continues, "In order for this emergent culture, born of differences and singularities, to come into being, instead of conforming to the ongoing standardization it will have to develop a specific imagination..."
Your Negotiable Panorama, 2006
Olafur Eliasson
b) On pg. 18, Borriaud writes about Claude Levi-Strauss, and a "disastrous monoculture." Is this monoculture indeed disastrous? Has nothing good come of globalization? He goes on to write about Levi-Strauss and a story of a poorly-made, mass-produced alcohol. Is he implying that modern art, or even mass produced art, is "rough and unrefined" like Levi-Strauss' Puerto Rican rum? Hasn't it opened the doors for more experimentation, which he refers to as a "principle on the basis of which modernity could be reconstituted"?
Very Round Chair
Lousie Campbell
c) Pg 29, Bourriaud states, "Why should Patagonian, Chinese, or Iranian artists be required to produce their cultural difference in their works, while American or German artists find themselves judged on their critiques of patterns or thought, or on their resistance to authority and the dictates of convention?"
In response to his question, I ask, who says they have to produce cultural art? Is it written somewhere? If it is, aren't rules - especially those in the "art world" - meant to be broken? I would also ask, are Americans not also, producing cultural art?
American Gothic, 1930
Grant Wood
American culture is very prominent in art, especially music,
past
and present.
d) One of the most interesting points that I think Bourriaud makes in this article is that about the cultural differences there are in a globalized country. He asks "What does it meant today to be American, French, Chilean, Thai? Already these words do not have the same meaning for those who live in their native country and those who have emigrated."
Nowhere is this more prevalent in the public education system. As a previous employee, and being that I am bilingual, I was often the one who dealt with many minorities and emigrants. In a parent teacher conference one night am emigrant mother explained to me how her daughter was caught in a kind of sub-cultural nightmare. Mother, father, and daughter were all born in Mexico, however, the daughter had lived the majority of her life in the United States. In the United States, she was considered Mexican, but in Mexico, she was not. The mother continued to explain to me that upon returning to Mexico, the Mexican children had said she was not "Mexican enough" and that she didn't have the same accent, or learn the same things in school. In America, she watched Univision, and other Spanish language channels where she learned almost nothing about American pop-culture, and again spoke differently. She didn't seem to completely "fit-in" in either country.
In the 1998 movie Gran Torino, the character Sue Lor says "The girls go to college and the boys go to jail." The movie clearly defines the culture shock caused by the "transplantation" which could be an underlying cause of why many gangs are formed, that "up-side down society." Where they "grow like wildflowers, sometimes provoking violent rejection."
e) "The altermodernity today is fueled by the flow of bodies, by our cultural wandering. It presents itself as a venture beyond the conceptual frames assigned to thought and art, a mental expedition outside identitarian norms. Ultimately, then, radicant thought amounts to the organization of an exodus. "
His conclusion to the chapter seems to open up a whole new barrel of questions for me, but also gets me wondering. As this global economy emerges and becomes more prevalent, then is it our responsibility to learn and accept every new culture that emerges, or moves in next door, even if it threatens and often interrupts our way of life? Will this "mental expedition" be enough for those who are not the actual "flowing bodies" but those who sprout roots instead of wings?
Gran Torino Clip
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