This weekend I visited the Tate Britain to see the latest Triennial exhibition, entitled ‘Altermodern’, curated by controversial French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud.
The proceedings began with a talk beforehand about the exhibition, its aims and context, which was, in hindsight, a nice way to begin if you hadn’t read anything about Nicolas Bourriaud or his term ‘Altermodern’, but if you had was a neat outline and an opportunity for the audience to voice their opinions and perhaps ironic objections to what some seemed to think as an autocratic discourse centred on one persons opinion; though, interestingly, no one complained about the radical decision to use foreign artists in a traditionally ‘British Arts’ show.
I think, and this is just my opinion of course, that everyone has opinions they’d like to share with others, so why not build those into a philosophy, write a few highly regarded books on contemporary art and start a renowned art gallery in Paris? Some people do more than merely offer criticism – which as Bourriaud might point out is a postmodern stance, ‘mourning’ the failures of the Modernists without offering a positive solution.
A first, the concept of Altermodern seems a positive one that surely resonates with a generation of artists that have the task of defining global issues and is hence a political stance that he says is a ‘loading and rebooting’ of the terms of modernism, ‘re-engaging with the history of politics’. Bourriaud envisages a Modernity that is created from scratch by contemporary artists. Themes such as Time, Space, History and Geography are to be explored if we are to find meaning in the ‘maze’ of the contemporary.
Initially, four ‘Prologues’, beginning in April last year, were set up as an opportunity for artists to muse on this notion, through debate and practice.
In Prologue 1, April 2008, critic Okwui Enwezor introduced and debated curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept of Altermodern, with films and performances by three artists followed by Prologue2: Exile, 3: Travel and 4: Borders.
Nicolas Bourriaud explains all in this short video: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/
After the talk we had lunch while we digested the context of the exhibition and went to investigate the Altermodern phenomena. There are 28 artists exhibiting, the foreigners referred to as ‘Passers By’ and the booklet takes you on a disorientating tour around the works, in no discernable order. The range and scope of the works covers many mediums, as the manifesto suggests, from Loris Gréaud’s ‘Tremors Where Forever’, 30 minutes of brain frequencies broadcasted from a central unit to vibrate the floor space, crossing the borders of science, performance, time and space, to Marcus Coates ‘The Plovers Wing’, where he questions the borders between human and animal consciousness through shamanistic services to a regional Australian mayor, offering empathy, channelled from the animal world.
Not everyone is agreeable. In his article for the Times culture supplement Waldemar Januszack labels it ‘phoney intellectualism’ indicative of the ‘pompous’ Paris Salon approach:
‘Just as the Paris salon favoured the conceptual over the actual — pretentious history painting over vivid snapshots of everyday life — so the Tate supports art that imagines it is on a higher plane than the everyday.
On one hand I can’t help agreeing that art should never become detached from people to the degree where it loses touch with its audience, especially in these difficult financial times when we are forced to address issues of necessity on such a mass, global level. Though, on the other hand I also think that in the maze that is contemporary culture, where genres mix and merge, identity becomes more fragmented and people struggle to find a voice in the rigid structures of western capitalism, we should not be afraid to challenge our perspectives on the world and examine the issues that this describes, so that we may find a new voice and alternative identities to the one’s sold us through capitalist ideology in the convergence culture that is warping our usual reference points. Perhaps a quest to re-engage with the terms of modernity could allow us to side-step the linear path of commercial progress, put us back in touch with the experimental nature of humanity and balance the books for enlightenment.
On reflection though I couldn't help wondering that perhaps Bourriauds previous ideas about Relational Aesthitics must not be forgotten, and perhaps the idea of all human activity, suggested as an interstice, a space for the creation of form, is still an undercoat that needs to be explored, especially as a bridging vehicle for marginal audiences to accept these new ideas as relevant to them in the short term at least, perhaps on a community level.
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