TEXTBIOBIBLIO

Chris Reid
For the Anthology



THE PRESENT
The new media have created new languages and established new interconnections, new ways of reading and new participants. For example, the performance art of this decade is made using the hand-held video recorder. The museum is now a series of intimate viewing rooms where the viewer can be (privately) absorbed by the video narrative. Home video is a vernacular form to which we all have access. So were drawing and photography.

Using the internet, the artwork is transmissible. We can select, view and copy and own any work we wish. We can download, where once we might have bought a painting and hung it on the wall. The public for art is now much larger, but the content is questioned.

We can make artworks of or about ourselves and place them on the internet for selection and consumption, thus validating ourselves. We are increasingly encouraged, even obliged, to use the internet for core business dealings.

Science has mapped the chemical processes in the human body that are associated with sexual attraction and relationships. We know about hormones and pheromones. We know that phenylethylamine is associated with the euphoria of love, we know how endorphins produce feelings of security. We know that low levels of serotonin are associated with depression, that oxytocin helps the bonding process that ensures that sexual relationships endure long enough to produce and raise offspring. We understand the psychology of love, jealousy and loneliness. We know how humans require both novelty and security, how they seek dominance and submission. We know how and why body language and voice tones speak louder than words. We almost know enough to be able to engineer any kind of relationship we wish. But if we know the chemical and psychological bases of Romeo’s and Juliet's infatuation, then does the story still need to be told? What can a poet tell us, except to continue to describe the heartache that remains?

Spirituality continues to suffer. Religions continue to be invoked to justify war and oppression. If we are genetically alike but culturally different, should we resolve our differences with war, debate or with a course of tablets?

How strong is the presumption that cities are the natural formations and locations of humanity, and that rural areas exist simply to serve cities with food and recreation? The view from a revolving restaurant symbolises our view of the world as scenery, an amusement.

Society accords cultural products a high status. Government and business are the guardians, and thus the arbiters, of culture. Is it this culture that we defend when we go to war or demand economic justice? Whose culture is it?

We live in a society with multiple and often conflicting traditions and sources of authority - the law, science, medicine, business and the economy, religions. We are simultaneously aware of the differing traditions and sources of authority in other societies. Many sources of authority are under constant revision. Society is in a state not only of change but of uncertainty. We endlessly question and renegotiate our value systems, belief systems and modes of governance and operation. Individuals renegotiate their identification with groups, communities and classes, and try to resist marginalisation and exclusion.

A society of self-reflexively constructed individuals, operating within a globalised world, cannot fully come to terms either with its pasts or with overriding moral and philosophical questions.

The primary subject of art 150 years ago was the condition of the emergent bourgeoisie, for example those newly structured into Hausman's Paris. The reflexive process continued, but, simultaneously, that subject was overtaken by the form in which it was rendered. The flatness, materiality and gestural nature of the paint became the subject. The submerging of the content by the form is evident in today's screen-based work.

The guidebook for the Yokohama 2001 International Triennial of Contemporary Art states that its aim is "to sustain the autonomous creativity of each region". Many artists there dwell on the post-colonial. We live in a world where national boundaries are under pressure from within and without. While there is the need for the world to be governed as a single entity to ensure economic, environmental and political security, there is also the push for the recognition of ethnic and regional identities, the consumption of the environment and the crisis of national consciousness. There are many cubicles in the Yokohama Triennial.

Language, including art, is a response to a stimulus.

THE FUTURE
Would you clone your lover? Or your mother? What would you say to them?

If your life can be extended by decades, will you learn to behave differently, or will you behave the same way for longer? Will you still be trying to pick someone up at a nightclub when you are 112 years old? If so, will you succeed? If you succeed, what then?

You only get 15 minutes of fame. Do you need more?

Class will be related to degrees of access to information. Will democracy, if it exists in a globalised world, be effected through the ballot-box or the market? The contradictions inherent in the concept of 'national interest' must soon drain the concept of its vote-winning power.

Instant, world-wide communication can potentially support a totalising, globalising polity. Such power offers the possibility of a holistic approach to problems. Our ability to use this power productively and selflessly, even our wish to use it in such a way, is dependent upon our beliefs and value systems. Without an attitude of inclusiveness and tolerance, our use of it is likely to be divisive and selfish. For how long can we continue to remain in bad faith?

Will social change be brought about through the TV screen, managed by media principals? Will art outside the commodity culture be confined to graffiti, street performance and internet activism?

Over the last 150 years, there has been continual questioning and renewing of artistic form. The challenging of form frequently becomes the purpose of the artwork. New forms have evolved in response to new technologies and new audiences, but all are eventually challenged. Great art brings a shift in consciousness. The impact of the internet is as great as that of the printing press or moving pictures. Will it be the realm of a canon of great 21th century artists? Can there be a new canon, and if so, what forms will be used?

For how long will the aesthetic of aporia continue? Is it inherent in art?

No matter how powerful the artistic imagery, it can encourage passivity and complicity in the viewer, or it can be overlooked. Artists might convey their message by locking us out of our galleries and museums and switching off our TVs. They might herd us onto buses, drive us to some relevant location and leave us there. Then we might experience the world as it is.

Chris Reid
Adelaide, October 2001