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In the first moment, you are always happy to be invited. You have
been chosen. You are being asked to contribute. Your vision. Of
a yet unknown art.
But then you realize that the question posed is one that will necessarily
also give you this kind of apocalyptic feeling that is the dark
side of the bright moon called great expectations enlightening our
dreams. What is my vision of something yet unknown, hence, unknown
not only to others, but also unknown to myself? I feel familiar
with utopias. But vision? This sounds like something further, something
you keep for yourself. Unless you are planning to become a religious
leader, or - maybe more profane: a missionary. On the other hand,
at least figuratively, in case you believe in what you are doing,
if you are convinced of having a message to spread... I would have
to admit, when doing my work, I have been called "missionary"
more but once, and not always with depreciative intention. And I
would have to admit: I definitely did like it.
However, I am far from calling myself "visionary" or (even
more awkward:) "a visionary". This would mean ending up
with the same kind of myths I am usually quite eager to analyse
and deconstruct wherever I get in touch with them. Like "the
artist as visionary", the "author/writer/critic as visionary",
just one variant of many that are still so virulent in our culture,
scientific culture included.
Of cause, at a certain point this is exactly what people pretend
I should identify with when writing about contemporary art: directing
readers to "new perspectives", introducing to them what
might be embraced as a "challenging position" - or, at
least, just showing and telling them something they do not already
know at length. At the same time, everybody is well aware that being
able to tell "what's next is not so much about vision, but
about professional curiosity, research - and communication, supported
by experience.
If I was a cynic, I might add, what is sold as vision is formed
by the interplay between the different agents in the operating system
of art, at the intersection between different arenas of representation,
money (and in the better cases, a good quantity of narcissistic
obsessions) being the lubricant to make the wheels run.
If I was a sophist, perhaps I'd borrow from the three famous sentences
on the non-existing (das Nichtseiende, le néant) attributed
to Georgias of Leontinoi, as I did in summer 2001 at a conference,
when being asked to give a talk about what, in the context of contemporary
art, were my visions of "future bodies", to state:
1. There is no unknown art.
2. If there was an unknown art, we would not know anything about
it.
3. If we knew about unknown art, we would not be able to say anything
about it.
Both of which would obviously lead to a less than productive result
for the anthology, and for myself as well.
Therefore, I decided to come back to what in its result should at
least come as close as possible to a visionary musing about an yet
unknown art: research and communication, hereby drawn, of cause,
by my own curiosity - and, as much as possible, also relying on
experience. Taking account of the purpose as well as the media based
format of the anthology, what would be more promising than to make
use of networks at hand to proceed?
Not only with respect to the short amount of time given to find
valuable results, but also to the project itself already being based
on the principle of a questionnaire, it seemed neither possible
nor appropriate to forward the question to several of the mailing-lists
I belong to. I must admit, I'd have preferred this solution to any
others - However, I chose a more personal, and in terms of media
as well as in terms of networking, quite traditional line of action
when I started to connect.
Trained as an art historian, my first idea was to ask art history
about what the past could contribute to the vision of a yet unknown
art. Why not find some expert knowledge, nourished by the experience
of decades of serious research in this field. Hence I called a friend
working in an major art archive. Her answer was negative. Of cause,
to a certain extent, it would be possible to research the data base
for the history of artists considering themselves visionaries. And
she could provide a whole range of data sets for the entry "unknown
artist". However, neither the search entry "unknown art"
led to any results nor had it ever been planned to be a valuable
entry in the database as such. This would not make sense anyway,
she answered: art history is known made art. For art history, unknown
art does not exist. What is not known as art cannot be art.
Does this mean that while a bigger part of art history's creativity
is clearly devoted to creating what will later be "known (as)
art", due to the fact that the conscious acknowledgement of
this process necessarily needs to stay suppressed, it is limited
to looking back to its own "knowledge" and, apart from
doing some research into the history of art history ideas, one is
condemned to be subjected to a reign of sophists? Do we have to
resign on that expert knowledge and experience in art lead to a
state that is not visionary at all?
Frustrated, I turned the opposite direction. Maybe not an expert
in art (who would probably know too much to have a vision of the
unknown), but somebody who is not concerned with art at all could
be a better company for my research. Hence, I called a friend who
works as a consultant for major companies (so called "global
players"). I assumed, an expert for yet unknown developments,
if not for trading visions even. And indeed, as a professional optimist,
she was very positive about my request, and immediately came up
with an idea. Our business philosophy currently gains a lot from
the realms of spiritual ideas, she said. Why don't you ask a clairvoyant?
Unfortunately, she could not know that this had been already done,
years ago - by a now well known German artist participating in the
Venice Biennial of 1999.
However, I still did like the idea of consulting a medium, especially
since not only in art history media play an important role for artists
concerned with visions of the unknown - including visions of an
unknown art as well (be it believing in this idea as such or with
an ironic attitude) -, but also that in more contemporary times
a lot of hype has been made around the importance of "new"
media for future developments in art. Hence, I called a friend working
at a big media art institution. Unfortunately, what she came up
with - apart from some well known McLuhan quotations dating from
the sixties - were references to 2001 ars electronica's motto, "Take
Over". While the festival itself had been expressly devoted
to the question of "who's doing the art of tomorrow",
the answers it proposed were not visionary at all: "The avant-gardiste
[sic!] principle of art striving to be a driving force and to impart
momentum to the development of society as a whole has undergone
a shift: science, pop culture and sub-cultural niches, business
& entertainment, software engineering, etc. are the epicentres
of the exciting current developments." Appropriating the idea
of avant-garde (or even the notion of art) for the entertainment
industry and business purposes is not only not new, it also leads
to quite "unvisionary", if not predictable results. And
above all, when it comes to contemporary art itself, learning from
and leaning on biz strategies is state of the art, and for sure
not striving to something "yet unknown" as well.
Now, what about the "new medium" of our decade, the internet?
While, for reasons already mentioned, I had rejected the idea of
spreading the question via mailing-lists, why not pose it directly
to the web itself? Hence, I started online research by using the
most simple and common tool for doing so: I asked a popular search
engine. As usual, for simple research, just entering the substantial
keywords contained in the question word by word, the mere output
was immense. We found 55,365,885 results, the engine told me. However
- who should seriously browse all this stuff? Additionally, as simple
key word research does not necessarily bring up documents in which
the entered items are combined (not to say: combined in a meaningful
way): How many hours of valuable lifetime would be needed to pick
the pearls among sheer amounts of crap? Fortunately, there was still
the opportunity of a refined request, which I started with a Boolean
query, now combining the key words myself to form meaningful expressions
quite close to the question so desperately waiting for to be answered.
Unfortunately, this time the output was not only more clearly arranged,
but obviously poor as well. Three entries only. The first lead to
the online shop of a second-hand bookseller. The second lead to
a so called "art broker" site. And the third referred
to a course syllabus in art history. In sum, when asking, as precisely
as possible, for what, in the context of contemporary art, might
be considered as a vision of a yet unknown art, all the web could
offer to me was either reference to history or the market or, if
you want so, a combination of both. You might imagine how frustrated
I was.
Consequently, for my very last attempt, I decided not only to come
back to my personal network, but also to consult somebody who probably
would understand my frustrations as well. Hence, I called a friend
who I knew as a professional in art as well as an internet nerd.
After successfully building up a major art community network with
public funding in the mid-nineties, she had faced not only the internet
boom and the net art hype, but also the following crash that, together
with the visions of so called start ups, made also the visions of
net art blow - later and for somewhat different reasons. Chastened
from her utopias of a free and creatively as well as collaboratively
developing net culture, she had even been trying her luck as an
art consultant in e-commerce. However, it seemed like nobody had
been willing to share her visions and so she had decided to make
some money and then retire as soon as possible. My call reached
her camping at a lakeshore in the wilderness where she was offering
survival courses and meditation for burned out managers, most of
them former IT consultants for major companies who had recently
returned to their jobs in the so called "old economy".
As I had hoped, if not expected, she was finally the one who could
give me the most valuable advice.
You will understand, she said, that while I talk about "visions"
a lot here, I think these kind of visions are definitely not what
you are looking for. And as a professional businesswoman, I would
not bother anybody with my personal visions, if I had any. Basically,
I would recommend, if you have visions, don't talk about them, just
strive to make them become real. Like the older people around here
use to say when setting out for hunting and fishing in the wilderness:
Yesterday is ashes, tomorrow is wood - today the fire burns.
Verena Kuni
Frankfurt a.M., January 2002
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