Amelia Jones
In the context of contemporary art, what is your vision of a yet unknown art?
In the context of contemporary art, what is your vision of a yet unknown art?
One of the reasons I'm not an artist is that I do not presume to foresee or imagine what is yet to come (which will, undoubtedly, remain "unknown" forever). I ruminate on the past and in so doing make my own future (and perhaps, if I'm lucky, touch or in some minuscule way color with rosy or otherwise evocative hue the futures of others). This caveat aside, who can pass up the invitation to pontificate on the future? The difficult part is to do this without being prescriptive or ludicrously self serving. Here goes a try at imagining, which I can only phrase in terms of what I'd like to see happen since I believe no one can know what will, given the glorious unpredictability of human and posthuman behavior (not to mention the possibility of global political collapse or radical, life-stifling ozone depletion) ..... * * * * * I have a dream .... That someday, the breakdown of distinctions between high and low so bravely sought after by the Dadaists will manifest itself as something other than an embrace of global capitalist excess. That an antidote will thus emerge to the Warhol-inspired willed excess that has come to characterize the mainstream European/U.S. art world - something like an expansion of the street-wise projects of Suzanne Lacy or Krzysztof Wodiczko? more internet interventions? corporate takeovers by artists? - a profoundly lived, rather than simply artificially proclaimed, relinquishing of European or American arrogance about the meanings and forms of culture? ..... That somehow, in spite of, or because of, our acknowledged lack of importance in the face of global terrorism and warfare, artists and art writers (those we might call art theorists) will regain a clear vision of how to make a difference, recognizing the effectiveness of coalitional thinking. That we will thus nix the YBA approach of feeding off of or into the puffed up art celebrity system, and adopt instead shifting identities and names that throw the media off scent - this would involve disavowing our will to power, our hunger for attention and remuneration .... That a healthy skepticism towards the way things are going politically (which, from the U.S. in February 2002 when I'm writing this, looks pretty bleak) will motivate stridency and productive rage rather than nurturing complacency as it has been doing since the beginning of the Reagan-Thatcher era .... That art theorists will find a way to use these new strategies to begin to heal or even to reverse the ravages wrought by global capitalism and to expose and so put an end to the socially sanctioned greed that motivates and is bred by it ... . That we might thus create newly conceived artistic projects aiming: to sabotage oil company propaganda and motivate the use of public transportation? to develop new modes of non-capitalized networked visual communication over the web? to organize artist-run secondary schools that subvert the rigid suppression of creativity common to today's educational systems and help produce new generations of art-workers? .... That in making culture, those of us living in what used to be called "Western civilization" will come to a greater understanding of the connectedness of all creative forces in the world, jolting us out of our (capital-driven) individualism and our desire simply to make something "new" and gain market share (a lesson from Carolee Schneemann and her Fluxus colleagues, from the Gutai artists, from Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, or from the Situationist International would be helpful here) .... That corporatized, wealthy white men of all sizes, shapes, incomes, colors, and anatomical dispositions will stop dominating cultural and political discourse in Europe and the U.S. so that we can stop acting as if any points of view other than this dominant one are "politically" motivated or dismissable as those of "special interest" groups. That all of us can embrace the "queer", "feminine", "lower class", and/or "colored" aspects of our inevitably failed selves, accepting our anxiety and lack rather than projecting it outward, while continuing to recognize specific differences between and among the representatives of global cultures .... That art theorists will truly embrace (rather than theorize or only rhetorically privilege) the madness that makes us human, that forever prevents our being or becoming centered or coherent or otherwise "phallic" subjects of being and knowledge; rather than producing culture as a means of sublimating or disavowing our mortality, our radical uncertainty, and our terrible fear in the face of the other (and ourselves), art theorists could then produce culture as an act of embracing rather than disavowing the terror that motivates us, releasing a productive madness into the world .... That art theorists will do more work in the world (for example: make rippingly vibrant photographs or paintings that speak to a broader public than the hip urban intelligentsia; make ads to heal world hunger, rather than ads for Absolut Vodka) and less work that skates over the surface of what happens every day on the streets of the world's cities and beyond .... That this work in the world could take the form of a lived culture that could be installed, pictured, enacted, danced, channeled, bit-streamed, or otherwise dangled in the visual field such that new networks of global dialogue would burgeon .... And, last but not least, that prescriptive ideas about what makes "good" art, or "progressive" postmodernism, or "art" altogether will finally wither away. That, correlatively, we will stop writing and reading criticism as if it is a map for what "should" or "will" happen. (That this brief array of somewhat incoherent thoughts would thus be entirely obviated is to the point ....) .... Hope that is clear. Amelia Jones Los Angeles, February 13, 2026 |
