I am glad to see you here and not online

How Closed is Now

Pricedlauer Berg to the right

From blogs to digital feudalism

Since the apparition of free hosting and the blogging culture, Internet users have enjoyed a sort of space democratisation on the web. A digital agrarian revolution, which permits people have a piece of land where intimate, artistic or simply commercial issues are shown.

Well immersed in a capitalistic era, as we are, the big names of the net operate as simple empowered entities, which dominate markets just as powerful nations do. Google, Yahoo, Altavista, Amazon or E-bay, are some of the new feudal landlords. They can give opportunities for small businesses to grow, this constitutes a new and modern version of humble farmers who cultivate and grow their products on line.

It may well be seen as an economic phenomenal, the old feudalism gave origin to capitalism. Nowadays, both forces represent an unprecedented unseen relation. The formation of a new e-bourgeoisie suggests a radical repetition of an old structural result: The post-modern historicist version of a social division connected right on the web.

Similarly, hosting companies sell and commercialise domains as fertile land for further prosperous entrepreneurships. As a result, there are more competitive initiatives within the Internet. This may be perceived as positive, as it feels like the very democratic regime which allows everyone to run a company as well as it allows people to show their art or their intimacy.

However, the peaceful hegemony exists. A minority controls the redistribution of digital space and the e-working class, struggles for success. As many relatively repeated historic issues, the humanity implicitly intends to improve things, just like the west has demonstrated. The Internet as a parallel case of study is showing that, as the history has been divided between a pre and post Internet era, some transitions from the past are being repeated in a modern and digital version. Hopefully, there won’t be any e-world wars.

Last Bite: the same old shame

It happens over and over again. The shamefully avoided last bite of comfiture at an exhibition opening. Attendees and commissioners talking about the last trend of criticisms, enjoy the wine and the bites until there is only one remaining.

The reason is simple: not to be seen taking it. Rude, uneducated, gross. The contemporary art society is well established in terms of manners. From the rich collector to the ordinary biennial pedestrian, none of them dares to eat it, to taste it or even to see it.

What is in the culture of today that does not allow individuals to spontaneously choose what to do? The current don’ts include the unaccepted behaviour avoidance: medieval blood perhaps in the XXI century.

It comes to a dramatic discrimination of that biscuit or exquisite cuisine creation, which goes straight to the rubbish, and cannot be deliciously digested by any of the “distinguished” tasteful mouths and stomachs that surround those elegantly disposed tables.

The values of shame meet the ethics of trends and the aesthetic of prejudices, while appetite is reprimanded. Those who prefer not to be the shameful victims of those inquisitive art world eyes, stay away from that last bite and its deliciousness.

The environment still remains the same: Art is not part of the popular culture yet. It does not allow the informal and spontaneous conducts of the majority: the truthful and uncultured ones.

From a post-modern perspective, this is the remaining path to the rigid structure of the “same old same”. The continuous state of the post-industrial world, which present these reluctant militants who speak the “vocabulary of the shame”.

However, the hopeful existent capability to shake the moral stands firm. One in five exhibitions is marvellous, one in ten art pieces is brilliant and nine in ten gallery-museum-art centre goers are those who will not eat the last bite from the plate.

The state of curators

During these almost post-post-modern times where philosopher Paul Feyerabend´s idea about the “all is valid” or “all counts” is more than used up, art as a discipline (or science) has been continuously fed up with this intellectual trend.

Within exhibitions, performances, lectures, seminars or simply cocktails people spend too much time at staring with critical eyes not only at pieces or lecturers, but at other people. Edward Munch´s “The Scream” faced arty militants pretending to know what the state of art is (the aesthetically correct piece), and deciding who is best or who is crap. In addition to that, they feel like style judges by looking at others form head to feet. Is it the real point of being at an exhibition opening? Is it the latest shape of the art world structure? “Art and the structures surrounding it have changed significantly over the past 40 years” [1]

This is perhaps true, new curatorial methods seem to be the trendiest determinisms which affect (or infect) the tension between curators and artists.

This apparently new epistemology intends to study the nature, basis, limits and validity of artistic proposals; therefore, “validated” works are the chosen candidates who will run for a place in this or that exhibition. There is a political elasticity between artists and curators.

Who is there to know what is valid and what is not?

Artistic civil disobedience in Austria, Hip-Hopish gang’s grafittis through almost all Paris tube tunnels, tens of thousands of trash tourism exponents “contemplating” paintings at the Louvre Museum everyday, aggressive dogs breeders training their puppies in Lund (south Norway), a sound installation in the Pompidou Centre, Leonard Richhard at the Kunstmuseum in Kristiansand, Ilya Kabakob´s brilliant installation in Norway´s National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiss the Frog in Tullinlokka ( Central Oslo), “Populism” at the National Museum of Art in Oslo. “ Politics is big on the agenda in exhibitions across Europe, a UK radio station votes Karl Marx the world’s greatest philosopher, and Norway’s Royals eat prison food. So?[2]

So art and politics all in one, curatorial populist democracy, we are all future curators, but future for some old thinkers was one second ago.

[1] www.frieze.com

[2] Jennifer Higgie www.frieze.com