Monday, May 3, 2010

Art & Globalism

The interconnectedness of globalistic society is constantly being challenged by those who champion local culture and fear the effects of global homogenization.  Yet, as evidenced in this chapter of Art & Today, local flavors of art and culture are being given new platforms on the internet on which they can connect, protest, grow, let alone survive.  All of humanity is getting acclimated to this new technology.  More and more people are online every day, the global village has grown into a online society full of pockets of ancient and emerging culture ripe for exploration by the curious mind.  This is the line we're being fed as members of a first world technologically advanced society.

As a member of that society I'm in favor of globalism, yet even after composing the previous paragraph, I have doubts about its true existence.  There is so much unexplored territory on our planet.  Despite what Google Earth or Bing might show you, there are new species being discovered every day in the depths of our planet's oceans.  

What do we really know about our planet?
How does mankind benefit from believing the planet is globalized?  
What does that vague word even really mean?
Sharing information is contagious and benefits the mission of the globalized society, so why are we legislating against it using copyright law?
When will Earth reach its maximum capacity for humans?
How does art's role in globalism help us understand the world around us?

Julie Mehretu

Allan Sekula

Alfredo Jaar

Antony Gormley Interview last year

Alighiero e Boetti

Art & Spirituality

Spirituality and art can be contentious issue because of the partisan nature of religion and how that can limit the creative interpretation of what it is that we do not know.  Change, like death and taxes, is part of life.  Why does religion resist it so?  Is it because we use religion to explain the inexplicable, and if those explanations change, we feel we must shift our understanding of the world in relation to that?  One correlation between art and spirituality  is the feeling of the encounter of a great work of art and how that relates to the feeling of blind faith in a higher power.  The way that has been expressed over time tells us about the intensity of religious zeal felt by different cultures throughout history, yet the pursuit of art for its own sake has occurred in only the last century.  Why did it take us so long to make art without divine inspiration?

Olafur Eliason controls the weather

James Lee Byars

Ana Mendieta

Jose Bedia

Andres Serrano

Theosophy on Wikipedia

Theosophy


Sunday, April 25, 2010

Art & Narrative

Pictures tell stories, they have for a long, long time.  With Post Modern thought, the story no longer had to be sequential or logical.  The allegorical became conceptual.  Artists began creating their own mythologies and basing their works on these self-imagined worlds.  The same has been true of great literature since the time of Homer.  So what has changed now that the narrative is back in action, reborn from the ashes of modernism in the 21st century?  Do we focus on the macro view of human existence like Matthew Ritchie or do we get micro about it and focus on the re-telling of a specific bank robbery like Pierre Hyughe?  Which is more relevant and does that matter? 

Sophie Calle - Venice Bienalle 2007

Pierre Hyughe