SAMO © AS INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE

I've been tossing a couple of ideas around in my head today and I think it's in no small part due to Jerry Saltz' review of the Venice Biennale show. Much of what I've been reading about the Biennale has been a little negative. I think everyone is getting quite nervous about what the next "ism" is going to be. We are in flux once more, tired of post-modernism and looking inwardly to find layers of meaning. I was looking at an interesting website which catalogues some of the SAMO© images and it struck me that Jean-Michel Basquiat, Al Diaz and Shannon Dawson (of the Band Konk) were offering up ascerbic institutional critique of sorts. The anonymity of their acts was really cool and this work in particular got me into Basquiat. (In my opinion he sold out as soon as he stopped contributing to this kind of activity but that's another days blog.)
So back to the point, whilst Saltz bemoans the profusion of instituitional critque and relational aesthetics in the Biennale and wonders what is around the corner I am quietly soaking up ideas from hither and thither. I'm looking to the USA and seeing the Left reclaim the notion of personal responsibility as it's own - no longer the libertarian claxon call of the right - Obama's rhetoric is lip smackingly utopian and enlightened. I sense an undercurrent building through the art world where practice is being placed at the center of the audience's concerns (whether Saltz likes it or not) and the much hyped democratisation of the means of disseminating information and the right to assembly that is facilitated via online social networks all culminates in what we might dare to call the nascence of a Neo-Enlightenment.

So, Is it possible that we are moving into a cultural, political and philosophical period of Enlightenment with a new understanding of the Left, where information and assembly is organised via social networks based on what we have in common ideologically and intellectually and the production of cultural material/art is based on transcendence.

I mentioned this to a friend and she asked two questions:

"Do you think public life should be based on agreement?
Do you think art should be conceived in terms of transcendence?"

I think that dissent and difference are important but as a means to find concord. I believe that transendence in terms of reaching for a horizon in this world rather than plain on another world is a useful means by which to achieve an inclusive group for the production of art that seeks to move on from the aesthetics of commodity and hegemomy.

So where is my evidence of this Zeitgeist? I believe it's been happening for a while, it's not that new, and I think the rest of the world is beginning to catch up only now. Critics may be tired of relational aesthetics, socially engaged art work may seem like jumped up pedagogy or social work and street art may be so much of a commonplace that much of the impact of it's intended detourement is lost but I believe we are only at the tip of the iceberg. As new ideas and practices emanate from the East and the dissemination of work is taken out of the hands of galleries and biennales and taken up by supposed "fringe" hosts ie online social networks, I think while the sale of artworks will continue the fetishising of the art object will diminish. I think the audience will continue to ask "how much is it worth?" but now a monetary value will not be the value that is sought.

The ideas that seem old to us are barely disseminated amongst the global populace. The Neo-Enlightenment period is upon us and those more articulate than me will define it in terms that are less cloudy.