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When asked exactly the same question in the early ‘80s, I was very specific in my predictions: that there will be no art objects in the future but (according to my then optimistic vision) the art concepts were to be transmitted in a telepathic way, without mediators and media, directly from the mind of the artist to the mind of the recipient. No paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, or CD-ROMs were to be made, but only on-going, interactive performances between the artist and the audience. Of course, such a naive claim could only come out of the late conceptual artistic experience that we all shared. Critical art practices from the ‘70s toward the art systems and art market that I appreciated made me think that art can be even more conceptual. Being a student and a member of the science-fiction association in Skopje, and as the only woman art historian, I felt I should be distinguished from the others with the most extravagant and the most radical expectations of art in the future.
The future that I was asked about now is our present and, obviously, we are much too far from telepathic art. On contrary, I would say that the art followed examples from film, music, and other art practices that, meanwhile, became industries. I cannot avoid thinking of the Y(oung) B(ritish) A(rtists) phenomenon. What will happen in the following years might be the complete opposite to my claim in the ‘80s. Actually, I guess that we will get two parallel and isolated phenomena, as we have such a situation in film: one option big productions affiliated to and supported by major commercial businesses and, on the other side, the option of completely alternative space for experimental art. What I am more concerned about is, of course, the viability of the second possible direction that art could take. Since today it is not clear enough if procedures and principles of non-commercial art can be subjected to the same principles as commercial art, that particular confusion endangers the existence of art in general. I would like to think that the main role in the future will have the local communities and their awareness of needing support of free-thought art. This may sound even more futuristic than my predictions at the beginning of the text, but, in my opinion, without awareness of the local societies, art in the terms we still know it will become completely extinct. I am afraid that, marginalized at the edge of existence, artists who will not be able or simply will not want to accept the celebrity structure of the art system will lose any motivation to fight the large marketing industries and will turn to any possible applications of whatever craft skills they have gained during their education. I think that overcoming this problem of freeing some space for the art that does not belong to the art market system, the problem of unequal exchange of art coming from non-Western origin will also be circumvented, since I can’t think the problems of the division of the art scene in centre and margins or periphery divided from the question of economy.
Suzana Milevska, Macedonia |
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