András Bálint Kovács
An Answer to the Question - Identify your Network!
An Answer to the Question - Identify your Network!
1. The context of contemporary art. Suppose we know what we are talking about. Has anyone thought about why there is no period-name for what surrounds us in terms of the production of artifacts? Anybody remember the word "post-modern"? Post-modern has vanished, unnoticed. To me, the context of contemporary art looks very much like the failure of the post-modern attempt to overcome modernism's rigorous, puritan and intellectual individualism. Individualism depends on the possibility of identification. Identification involves giving a name. Giving a name is knowing the truth. Is it possible to avoid the problem of truth in art for a long time? 2. Hence the problem of referentiality. "The other" does not exist. It is always a particular other who has a particular name belonging to a specific context or network. The "other" may be on your network but is not part of it. You have to refer to it, name it to accept it, or to reject it. I cannot think about art of the future that does not return some sort of referential discourse. 3. It is not possible to refer to any individual name without referring by the same virtue to its network or context. This is a modernist idea. It is not possible to refer to any individual name at all, names are only transitory phenomena in a general, all-embracing system of networks. The virtual is worth as much as what is real. This is a post-modernist idea. New universalism or globalism is neither the system of actual individuals, nor that of virtual individuals, but rather a system of actual and individual networks. An individual cannot be a constitutive element of all the networks. Any given individual is a closed set at any given moment. From now on, this aspect seems to be more relevant than the aspect of universal openness. So, it is necessary to be able to distinguish between networks, to call them names. Hence the end of the "age of Deleuze" (Foucault). Referential discourse does not allow the subject to remain in a constant dissolution and in diffusion in a unified and global system. Virtual self-effacement must stop before it becomes real. Deleuze said: "And there is nothing behind the difference." This is true, except for the ultimate difference: that which exists between life and death. Post-modernism has forgotten about this one. 4. Yet, there is no return to modernism. Modern art was the grim recognition that death awaits behind everything. Modernism was the omnipotent individual's point of view who realized how lonely and insignificant she can be if she takes the place of God (especially if it is possible for everyone to become an individual). But post-modernism recognized that the individual's point of view is not omnipotent. Not everything is sad, tragic, insignificant or ridiculous. Modernism was a powerful statement but it overvalued the idea of Nothingness. Post-modernism had a rather childish attitude vis-à-vis Nothingness: if you can't do anything about it, play with it. Early modernism was art stemming from the struggle against the dominance of the masses. Late modernism was art stemming from a struggle against the self-destruction of the masses. Post-modernism was play with virtual self-destruction. Self-effacement is virtual as long as we exist in a unique network. It becomes real when we pass on to another one. One option is the unification of systems, i.e. globalism, while the other is radical isolationism. In both cases, the return to logos seems unavoidable. András Bálint Kovács Budapest |
