Pauline von Bonsdorff
A future art
A future art
Art and the artworld The artworld today is, by and large, a globalised art market. It is a market not only in the commercial and economical sense but also because people acting in the artworld compete with each other for attention. (This might apply to artists, critics, and curators.) Inside the artworld, many kinds of art certainly thrive. We find art that is self-reflective, critical, interactive, just beautiful, playful, shocking and so forth. Nevertheless, by becoming included in the artworld, artistic work is to some extent separated from its context of production and sometimes from the things it is supposed to be about (take, for example, art with a social content). This is not to say that the work loses its use value and capacity to beget thought, experience, reflection or communication by being accepted by the artworld. Since the work becomes an object of art criticism, its area of influence grows - but also undergoes changes in quality. For mechanisms of trivilisation are at work through the artworld. The audience has been taught that art is art, not reality. Thus the concept "art" is problematic not so much in theory or because art cannot be defined, but for reasons related to how the work works or does not work, to what spaces and possibilities it opens up or closes. Good art Art is and remains a value concept. To speak about a future art therefore means to reflect upon good art and so to presuppose some conception of what makes art good. Here is one suggestion: good art is technically well made, it has a character and a capacity for making sense in particular contexts, in other words engage and touch its audience. It is relatively easy to make art that is beautiful or sublime in a narrow sense, art that gives pleasure or produces a shock. But if pleasure and shock are understood only in the context of individual experience, this is relatively uninteresting. Such art is good for some, pleasant in the same way as a foam bath or S/M practices are (depending on your personal preferences). However, hedonistic practices cannot as such claim larger cultural importance. What makes art good in a deeper sense - to the point of the unforgettable - is an engagement with human existence which encompasses things that are shared and humanly real. Among these are: social conditions, historical facts, scientific or religious beliefs, political ideals and illusions, experience, memory, ideals, hopes. (Perhaps needless to say, it is not necessary to include all of these in one work.) A future art As an unlimited forward stretch of time, the future is abstract. It has to be looked upon from the present, from where I stand. Who knows how far the future I (or anyone) envisage will last? But more important than this worry is, surely, to think about what things are such that they will last and also help other things to survive and thrive. What is an art like that supports and fuels a benign continuity, the development of culture and ways of life that give room for other, unexpected human and non-human life-forms? I can see three characteristics. Future art is transnational and rooted in local contexts, which it is also able to transcend - while preserving the richness and qualities of its "own" soil and climate. Context here refers to both specific cultures ("high" or "low") and shared and mixed everyday life, which has its own local flavour in all places. Future art has or embodies historical consciousness. But the past and the future are interdependent: without one, we will not have the other. Future art is an art of memory and/or vision. It may refer to things that have happened and cannot be retrieved, to things that can only be re-created or reflected upon. Or it can create memory by intensifying the present: articulate, crystallise, force us to feel and engage with where we are. Or it can focus upon where things are going and where they could be going - reminding us that none of this is "real". Artworks can show us how time - past, present and future - is plural. Therefore, future art is connected to responsibility. It is not necessarily a responsibility that the artworks take upon them but rather a responsibility the audience is urged to carry - one by one, and one for all. post scriptum Future art does not differ radically from past or present art. But it differs as life does. Pauline von Bonsdorff Helsinki |
