Tomorrow evening (May 15) the New Museum is hosting an event conceived by the editors of the literary journal n+1. It dovetails nicely with the concerns of “Younger Than Jesus.” “The ’90s vs. the ’90s” includes Michael Azerrad, Mark Greif, Emily Gould, A. S. Hamrah, Marisa Meltzer, and Aaron Lake Smith, and considers the legacy of the ’90s and how we are being shaped by them. To find out more, click here.
Posts in the ‘"YTJ" Events’ Category
Friday night: “The ’90s vs. the ’90s”
May 14, 2009 | YTJBrian Sholis’s introduction to “Redefining Generations: Then and Now”
April 18, 2009 | YTJHere 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…
Advance Prep for “Communism Never Happened” (I)
April 3, 2009 | YTJThere are several discussions and musical performances taking place at the New Museum in conjunction with “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.” Posts labeled “Advance Prep” offer suggested reading, listening, or watching that might help set the context for the events.
On Thursday, April 9 at 7 PM, the New Museum presents a panel discussion titled “Communism Never Happened” and moderated by art historian Charity Scribner. Here are four books likely to be relevant to that night’s discussion.
Charity Scribner, Requiem for Communism (MIT Press, 2003)
In Requiem for Communism Charity Scribner examines the politics of memory in postindustrial literature and art. Writers and artists from Europe’s second world have responded to the last socialist crisis with works that range from sober description to melancholic fixation. This book is the first survey of this cultural field.
Boris Groys, Art Power (MIT Press, 2008)
Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market’s fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways—as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function; the official and unofficial art of the former Soviet Union and other former Socialist states, for example, is largely excluded from the field of institutionally recognized art, usually on moral grounds (although, Groys points out, criticism of the morality of the market never leads to calls for a similar exclusion of art produced under market conditions). Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today’s mainstream Western art—which he finds behaving more and more according to the norms of ideological propaganda.
Public Spheres After Socialism, edited by Angela Harutyunyan, Kathrin Hörschelmann, and Malcolm Miles (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
The idea of public spaces—city parks, waterfront bike paths, and bustling squares—has long been associated with urban environments. Public Spheres After Socialism challenges this idea in light of the end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Drawing together experiences from across Europe, this innovative volume reconsiders the public sphere as a figurative, or mythical, location where members of society shape and determine its values. This book examines monuments, reconstruction, film, and new media to ask whether public spaces are viable in an age of globalized consumerism.
Art and Theory After Socialism, edited by Mel Jordan and Malcolm Miles (Intellect Ltd., 2008)
Art, theory, and criticism faced radical new challenges after the end of the cold war. Art and Theory After Socialism investigates what happens when theories of art from the former East and the former West collide, parsing the work of former Soviet bloc artists alongside that of their western counterparts. Mel Jordan and Malcolm Miles conclude that the dreams promised by capitalism have not been delivered in Eastern Europe, and likewise, the democratic liberation of the West has fallen prey to global conflict and high-risk situations. This volume is a revolutionary take on the overlap of art and everyday life in a post–cold war world.
Advance Prep for “Networked Equality” (1)
April 2, 2009 | YTJThere are several discussions and musical performances taking place at the New Museum in conjunction with “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.” Posts labeled “Advance Prep” offer suggested reading, listening, or watching that might help set the context for the events.
“Networked Equality,” a conversation between Farai Chideya and Ethan Zuckerman that will be moderated by Brian Sholis, will take place on May 30 at 3PM. Both speakers have websites worth visiting: Click here for Farai Chideya’s homepage and blog, and click here for Ethan Zuckerman’s blog.
Related reading includes “Texting Toward Utopia?” in the March/April 2009 issue of the Boston Review. In this article, author Evgeny Morozov asks whether the Internet spreads democracy:
Could it be that changes in the Web over the past six years—especially the rise of social networking, blogging, and video and photo sharing—represent the flowering of the Internet’s democratizing potential? This thesis seems to explain the dynamics of current Internet censorship: sites that feature user–generated content—Facebook, YouTube, Blogger—are especially unpopular with authoritarian regimes. A number of academic and popular books on the subject point to nothing short of a revolution, both in politics and information (see, for example, Antony Loewenstein’s The Blogging Revolution or Elizabeth Hanson’s The Information Revolution and World Politics, both published last year). Were the cyber–optimists right after all? Does the Internet spread freedom?
The answer to this question substantially depends on how we measure “freedom.”
Morozov has also launched a new blog for the website of Foreign Policy magazine, called Net Effect.
Another article, titled “Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web,” was published July 22, 2007, in the New York Times:
Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa.
A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet traffic is routed this way and costs African countries billions of extra dollars each year that they would not incur if their infrastructure was up to speed.
Click through to the article to see a chart depicting the number of mobile phone and Internet users in Africa.
