28.4.05

the dolce utopia

" ...art was intended to prepare and announce a future wold: today it is modelling possible universes.
the ambition ofartists who include their work in the slipstream of historical modernity is to repeat neither its forms, nor its claims, and even less to assign to art the same functions as it. their task is akin to the one Jean Francois Lyotard allocated to postmodern architecture which is, "condemned to create a series of minor modifications in a space whose modernity it inherits, and abandon an overall reconstruction of the space inhabited by humankind". what is more, Lyotard seems to half-bemoan" this state of affairs: he defines it negatively, by using the term 'condemned'. and what, on the other hand, if this 'condemnation' represented the historical chance whereby most of the art worlds known to us managed to spread their wings..? this 'chance' can be summed up in just a few words: learning to inhabit the world in a better way, instead of trying to construct it based on a preconcieved idea of historical evolution. otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist."

'relational aesthetics' - nicolas bourriaud


emma has lent me a very exciting book

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