2009 April | Reports from The Generational: Younger Than Jesus

Archive for April, 2009

Millennials as consumers and workers, not producers

April 29, 2009 | YTJ

From the first page of Google Image results for the search term "Gen-Y workplace"

In the introduction to Younger Than Jesus: The Reader, Brian Sholis writes:

Examine the surface of this topic and one encounters marketers and management gurus. The former group hopes to capitalize on the fact that members of the millennial generation were raised during a period of nearly uninterrupted Western prosperity and accelerating economic development around the world. They have established sophisticated ways to counter the increasing sophistication of the young consumers they covet. They wrestle with appealing to a group whose relationship to the world at large is mediated, thanks to computers, in ways unlike any previous generation. The latter group wants to help corporations to bridge the social and cultural gap that runs alongside the generational divide. These writers attempt to explain how the millennial generation’s values and mores shape its attitude toward work. Both the marketers and the managers seek to integrate young people into adult society as seamlessly as possible, turning them into competent, amiable workers and reliable consumers.

What does this literature look like? A quick glance around the web reveals YPulse.com, a site that offers information about “youth marketing to teens, tweens & Generation Y”; the Generation Relations blog, the most recent post to which is titled “The Booming Gen Y Narcissism Epidemic”; DrivenLeaders.com, which offers “thoughts, insights, and refelections [sic] for emerging leaders of Generation Y”; and the Personal Branding Blog, written by “the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y.”

For many in the art world, delving into this material is like entering Alice’s wonderland: the material encountered on these sites is both fascinating and faintly abhorrent. And yet this is by far the most popular literature on the Millennial Generation. A simple but difficult-to-answer question arose during the research for the exhibition catalogue: In surveying the work created by artists of this generation and attempting to identify its salient characteristics, how necessary is it to be familiar with the ideas of these marketers and managers?

Ron Charles on the Twitter generation’s reading habits

April 27, 2009 | YTJ

Handelingenkamer Tweede Kamer Der Staten-Generaal Den Haag, the Hague, Netherlands

Six weeks ago Washington Post critic Ron Charles caused a stir with an article titled “On Campus, Vampires Are Beating the Beats.” Looking back to the days when college students read Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul On Ice or Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, Charles laments that today, “the best-selling titles on college campuses are mostly about hunky vampires or Barack Obama.” He continues:

Here we have a generation of young adults away from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental period of their lives, yet they’re choosing books like 13-year-old girls — or their parents. The only specter haunting the groves of American academe seems to be suburban contentment.

Where are the Germaine Greers, the Jerry Rubins, the Hunter Thompsons, the Richard Brautigans — those challenging, annoying, offensive, sometimes silly, always polemic authors whom young people used to adore to their parents’ dismay? [...] Could any author of fiction that has not inspired a set of Happy Meal toys elicit such collegiate mourning today? Could a radical book that speaks to young people ever rise up again if — to rip-off LSD aficionado Timothy Leary — they’ve turned on the computer, tuned in the iPod and dropped out of serious literature?

Charles cites a recent survey that suggests two-thirds of American college students identify themselves as “middle-of-the-road” or “conservative.” Among the responses to Charles’s cry of anguish are online posts by Jenna Krajeski, at the New Yorker, and Scott McLemee, at Inside Higher Ed, who interviewed Charles about his essay:

“I was surprised and disappointed,” he told me, “by the number of respondents who felt I wanted college students to start reading the works of Abbie Hoffman and other ’60s and ’70s writers. Or that I was complaining that they weren’t reading more Serious Literature. That wasn’t really my point: I was actually disappointed that they weren’t reading more age-appropriate material: not stuff for middle schoolers and not stuff for adults, but all the kinds of crazy, wild, naïve, in-your-face, big-think literature that young people should be reading during that magical moment between high school and the first soul-crushing job.”

In preparing the Live Archive on the museum’s fifth floor, participating artists in “Younger Than Jesus” answered a survey question about books that had influenced them. Among the authors listed in their responses were Thomas Pynchon, J.G. Ballard, Naomi Klein, W.G. Sebald, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Sello K. Duiker, Victor Pelevin, Audre Lorde, Roland Barthes, Parastou Forouhar, and Hamid Mossadegh. Now we’re curious about our audience: What “in-your-face, big-think literature” has shaped you?

Week three media round-up

April 24, 2009 | YTJ

Here’s a roundup of new “Younger Than Jesus” coverage. This site will return with new posts on Monday.

Artnet has posted three articles about the show (or its participating artists) to its online magazine. One is by Ben Davis, one is by Charlie Finch, and one, titled “Artnet Gossip,” is by “Rosetta Stone.”

Sharmila Devi, foreign correspondent for the Abu Dhabi–based English-language paper The National, files a report that focuses on participating artists from the Middle East, in particular Lebanese photographer Ziad Antar.

Meredith Bryan speaks with participating artists Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas, of AIDS-3D, for the New York Observer; Cynthia Daignault reviews the exhibition for Last Exit magazine.

For those of you who read Polish, Krzysztof Masiewicz has published a lengthy commentary, with many photos of artworks included in the show, at the website ArtBazaar.

Bloggers have responded to the show, too: Melissa Tuckman offers thoughts on Ryan Trecartin on her website Melitism; Charles Kessler discusses last Saturday’s panel with artists Joan Jonas, Mira Schor, and Carroll Dunham at his Left Bank Art Blog; and Jenni, who blogs at “Crazy,” has posted a review of the show.

Visitor suggestions for the “Live Archive” timeline

April 23, 2009 | YTJ

The Live Archive. Photo by Benoit Palley.

The Live Archive is a resource center presented on the fifth floor of the New Museum in conjunction with “Younger Than Jesus.” One of its features is a selective historical timeline—the multicolored grid seen in the photo at right—that lists historical and cultural events from 1976 to 2009. The participating artists selected some of these for the importance the events had in their own lives. The timeline also includes a suggestion box in which visitors can write in events or cultural creations of importance to them. Here is a sampling of the suggestions submitted during the exhibition’s first two weeks.

December 15, 1989 – Manuel Noriega was given the title chief executive officer of the Panamanian government, and he declared a state of war with the United States. Two days later, US President George Bush ordered troops to Panama. Noriega took refuge in the Vatican nunciature (embassy) in Panama, until he surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was transpored to Miami, where he was arraigned on criminal charges.

January 22, 2008 – Australian actor Heath Ledger is found dead in his apartment in New York; it was later declared that he died from an accidental overdose of a mixture of prescription drugs.

July 12, 1998 – France defeats Brazil 3-0 in the final at Saint-Denis, near Paris, to win the 16th World Cup.

January 17, 1995 – A large-scale earthquake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, hits the southern part of Hyogo prefecture in Japan. It causes an estimated 6,400 deaths, injured approximately 40,000 people, displaced 300,000 people from their homes. The city that suffers the worst damage is nearby Kobe.

November 5, 1982 – Jacques Tati, a French filmmaker and actor who gained renown for his comic films, several of which he starred in as Monsieur Hulot, dies.

April 30, 1997 – Actress Ellen DeGeneres reveals she is gay on the television show Oprah. On the same day, ABC airs “The Puppy Episode” of her television show Ellen, in which the main character Ellen Morgan realizes she is gay and comes out.

July 4, 1976 – The United States celebrates its bicentennial with festivities across the country.

September 20, 1985 – EMI releases singer Kate Bush’s album Hounds of Love in the United Kingdom. It is Bush’s fifth studio album and the second to reach No. 1 on the charts.

Be sure to stop by the fifth-floor Live Archive to see if the events of great importance in your own life are on our timeline. If not, please place them in the suggestion box and check back here.

Last Chance to see “YTJ” artist Matt Keegan’s New York solo show

April 22, 2009 | YTJ

Installation view, D'Amelio Terras, 2009.

“Younger Than Jesus” artist Matt Keegan has a solo exhibition on view in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, and this weekend is your last chance to catch it. Titled “New Windows,” the show is on view at D’Amelio Terras through Saturday, April 25. For more information, click here to visit the gallery website and click here to read a review by Sarah Douglas published on Artinfo.com.

Is hipsterdom the “dead end” of western civilization?

April 21, 2009 | YTJ

Illustration courtesy Adbusters.

Daniel Haddow claimed as much last summer in the countercultural magazine Adbusters. His article has sparked more than 4,000 online comments, perhaps a record for that small-circulation title. Its thesis seems less provocative than perfectly pitched to garner responses from its self-conscious and digitally connected subjects. Here are a few excerpts:

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

[...]

The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.

[...]

With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.

What is particularly interesting is the way the article recapitulates arguments about the “end of art,” advanced by philosopher-critic Arthur Danto in 1984, among others. “But Danto didn’t mean that artists were no longer making art; rather, he was referring to the end of art history,” reports the introduction to a 2005 interview with Danto in The Nation, where he serves as art critic. “Throughout much of this history, artists–from Hellenistic sculptors in ancient Greece to academic realist painters of nineteenth-century France–sought to realistically depict the natural world. But with the advent of Modernism, realism devolved in a rapid denouement–brush strokes became visible and bold, color was expressive rather than authentic and the figure became increasingly sketchy and crude until nothing remained but pure abstraction. By the 1980s, however, this linear progression came to an abrupt end as the art world entered a new, pluralistic era. This era was not defined by a dominant school or movement but was characterized by its lack thereof.” In the same way, Haddow, in his Adbusters article, claims, “An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it.” Do you agree? Post a comment via the link below or submit an e-mail via the address in the right-hand column.

Young People, Art, and Today’s Economy

April 20, 2009 | YTJ

1213-biz-webcharts

Art-market speculation has saturated art-world discourse for at least the last eighteen months, with “When will the bubble burst?” worrying giving way to “What do we do now?” strategizing. How do changing economic conditions effect the young? According to a report published last December in the New York Times, younger job-seekers have it worse: “The recession provides a double whammy for the job prospects of those trying to establish themselves. There are fewer jobs to go around, and older Americans who can do so are either delaying retirement or seeking to return to the work force.” According to another story in the same paper, even the relatively well-to-do are feeling the pinch: “It is impossible to quantify how many affluent parents have trimmed allowances in recent months — or how many of their offspring, in turn, have sought either formal employment or odd jobs. But interviews with dozens of teenagers, parents, educators and employers suggest that many youngsters from well-to-do families seem to have found a new work ethic as the economic crisis that has jeopardized their parents’ jobs and investments has also led to less spending money for Saturday night movies or binges at Abercrombie & Fitch.”

The questions this raises, of course, have to do not only with immediate prospects, but with long-term effects. So noted Kate Zernike in an article published last month:

So what of the youth shaped by what some are already calling the Great Recession? … Will they marry younger, be satisfied with stable but less exciting jobs? Will their children mock them for reusing tea bags and counting pennies as if this paycheck were the last? At the very least, they will reckon with tremendous instability, just as their Depression forebears did.

“The ’30s challenged the whole idea of the American dream, the idea of open economic possibilities,” said Morris Dickstein, an English professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, whose cultural history of the Depression will be published in September. “The version you get of that today is the loss of confidence on the part of both parent and children that life in the next generation will inevitably be better.”

How today’s young will be affected 10, 20 or 40 years on will depend on many things — the children of the Depression were shaped as much by the war that followed. The recession generation will include those born into it, at the youngest end, and those emerging out of college and high school into a jobless marketplace, at the oldest. If history is any guide, what will matter most is where they are on the continuum.

“There is no simple cause-and-effect relationship in how economic adversity pushed a generation into any one kind of behavior,” said Neil Howe, who with his longtime co-author, William Strauss, is credited with naming today’s 20-somethings the millennials. “The impact depends on the context and the mood of the time and how children understand the spirit of the times.”

We’re curious about how this affects art-making. Will young artists have to give up their studios and work from home? Will there be a decline in big-budget art films and sculptures that require production teams? Will there be a concomitant rise in drawings and small-scale painting? Will artists increasingly turn to using found (i.e., free) objects in their work? How do you see the economy changing your practice? To paraphrase Morris Dickstein’s quote above, how will it affect your vision of art’s possibilities?

UPDATE, 2:15 PM: Last week, the New York Times‘ ArtsBeat blog posed a similar question, and many responses have been filed. Click here to read them and here to read arts journalist András Szántó’s comments at the website Art World Salon.

Exhibitions by “YTJ” artists in Minneapolis, New York, Malmö, and Rotterdam

April 20, 2009 | YTJ

“Younger Than Jesus” participating artists Ryan Gander, Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Haris Epaminonda, and Patricia Esquivias all have solo exhibitions on view at the moment.

Ryan Gander’s traveling survey exhibition “Heralded as the New Black” is on view from March 21 through May 24 at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. For more information about the show, click here.

Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch have just opened new exhibition featuring a large-scale installation and a number of sculptures at Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York. The show is on view from April 11 through May 16. For more information, click here.

The Berlin-based artist Haris Epaminonda has a solo exhibition at the Malmö Konsthall in Malmö, Sweden. It opened on April 2 and remains on view through May 10. For more information, click here.

The Madrid-based artist Patricia Esquivias has a solo exhibition at Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The show, titled “Reads like the Paper, 2005–2009,” is on view from April 4 through May 30. More information can be found by clicking here.

Brian Sholis’s introduction to “Redefining Generations: Then and Now”

April 18, 2009 | YTJ

Here is part of the text Brian Sholis read to introduce the topic of “Redefining Generations: Then and Now,” a panel discussion with artists Mira Schor, Joan Jonas, and Carroll Dunham. Did you attend the event? Please feel free to discuss the themes outlined below, or offer your impressions of the panel. Use the comment link at the bottom of this post or the e-mail link in the right-hand column.

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset’s essay “The Concept of the Generation,” which is reprinted in the “Younger Than Jesus” exhibition catalogue, has informed much subsequent sociological thinking about generations. I decided to organize today’s panel in part because Ortega wrote this: “Generations are born one of another in such a way that the new generation is immediately faced with the forms which the previous generation gave to existence. Life, then, for each generation, is a task in two dimensions, one of which consists in the reception, through the agency of the previous generation, of what has had life already, e.g., ideas, values, institutions, and so on, while the other is the liberation of the creative genius inherent in the generation concerned.”

I’d like to suggest that this exhibition’s “Live Archive,” a resource center on the fifth floor, contains information about some of what the Millennial Generation has to “received,” in Ortega’s sense, and that the artworks in the museum’s galleries demonstrate whether or not, in processing their given cultural and historical material, these young artists have “liberated their creative genius.” I leave it to each of you to decide to what extent that has happened. I’d also like to suggest that the artworks made over the past few decades by today’s three panelists—Joan Jonas, Mira Schor, and Carroll Dunham—and by their peers are very much a part of that legacy. An important phrase in the Ortega quote is “through the agency of the previous generation”: In this older generation’s multiple roles—not only creative example, but also teacher, writer, friend—their agency helps shape the art created today. What have the “Younger Than Jesus” artists taken up from previous generations and what have they rejected? Again, that’s for everyone here to determine after spending time with the show. What may be more difficult to discern from the exhibition itself is how the idea of “the generation” manifests itself throughout an artist’s career. This no-doubt shifting understanding is one of the key themes I hope to draw out in the conversation to come. But before I bring our panelists up I’d like to mention a few other issues that may also be relevant to the discussion. One benefit of an exhibition like this is that it raises more questions than it answers.

The first, and largest, question is whether the generational conceit underpinning “Younger Than Jesus” is useful or salient today. With our ever-increasing awareness of the very different particularities of others’ experiences—even in the face of the West’s powerful ability to project its own values into other corners of the globe—can any international group of artists be said to represent a “generational sensibility”? To take an example from the juxtaposition of two artworks upstairs, what unites an artist like Cory Arcangel and an artist like Chu Yun? What meaningful experiences do they share? It’s one thing for us to ask such questions. What might they suggest as answers?

Secondly, and in a related vein, any discussion of artistic generations and artistic succession necessarily implies related questions about art-historical categorization and periodization. How do the innumerable experiences and influences that effect artists in complex ways get boiled down into the comprehensible narratives of art history? What role do museums play in this process? What is gained and what is lost when artists are slotted into medium-specific categories or into chronologically bounded eras?

Lastly, many argue that the contours of a generation are visible only in the fullness of time, and that any attempt to make sense of that shape while it is still being formed entails unavoidable distortions. If this generation is still being formed—and no one I found while doing research for the exhibition catalogue claimed the door has closed on it—what does someone born in 1979 have in common with someone born in 1989, in 1999, or, for that matter, in 2009? It’s unlikely we will know until, say, 2039.

In the meantime, I have the great pleasure of introducing three talented artists whose own experiences, and the insight they have gained from them, will be the fodder for this afternoon’s conversation…