[-empyre-] forward from Christiane Paul: Is Modernity our Antiquity? - introductory comments

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

From: <Christiane_Paul@whitney.org>
Date: March 1, 2006 3:21:37 PM PST
To: <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Is Modernity our Antiquity? - introductory comments

I must admit that Roger Beurgel's statement on the Documenta topic  
for March -- "Is Modernity our Antiquity?" (for reference, I posted  
it again at the end of this message) -- came as a bit of a surprise  
to me. That we might still be operating under the specter of  
modernity to the extent suggested by his statement hadn't really  
occurred to me. Granted, any society is shaped by its history of  
philosophy, art, science etc. -- which, together, shape culture  
(another contested term I guess) -- and no "movement" or school of  
thought is ever entirely surpassed but survives in responses to and  
modification of itself. Nevertheless, I had been (mostly) operating  
on the assumption that contemporary culture is struggling to define  
its current climate of "whatever came after postmodernity." Then  
again, this is what makes the "modernity as our antiquity" question  
interesting.

I don't think one can use the term "modernity" without being very  
specific about the context in which it is framed. "Modernity" and  
"Modern" describes a broad range of periods, starting between 1870 -  
1910 and reaching into the 60s, depending on context. (My original  
background is in literature where the understanding of modernity  
covers a shorter time frame and differs quite substantially from the  
concept of modernity in art.)

If one checks Wikipedia, one finds a dizzying array of (sometimes  
contradictory) classifiers for defining aspects of modernity,  
including: "Bureaucracy, Disenchantment of the world,  
Rationalization, Secularization, Alienation, Commodification,  
Decontextualization, Individualism, Subjectivism, Linear Progression,  
Objectivism, Universalism, Reductionism, Chaos, Mass society,  
Industrial society, Homogenization, Unification, Hybridization,  
Diversification, Democratization, Centralization, Hierarchical  
organization, Mechanization, Totalitarianism, and so on."

Some of them are still applicable to contemporary culture, even  
though their meaning has changed today (Commodification,  
Hybridization, Diversification etc.); others seem to be less  
pertinent (Centralization, Hierarchical organization etc.) or at  
least one would need to acknowledge that there is a pronounced  
tension between centralization / decentralization, hierarchical /  
networked organization in the age of information technologies.

So what is the relationship between modernity and present societies?  
Are we still living in late modernity, a variant of it  
(hypermodernity), or a sub-category (post-postmodernity)?

We are looking at an increased movement of goods, capital, people,  
and information (that has resulted in both diversification and  
various symptoms of "globalization"). At the same time, parts of the  
world seem to be in a phase of returning to pre-Enlightenment stages  
of de-secularization and the irrational. I don't think that these  
tensions and splits can be still adequately captured by the poles of  
modernity / antiquity.

All of my work -- as a curator, teacher, writer etc. -- evolves  
around "new media" and information technologies, and I can't say that  
contemporary artistic practice in this field comfortably fits under  
an umbrella of late or hypermodernity. To be discussed…
Christiane

=============
Roger Beurgel, the artistic director of Documenta 12, has posted this  
new formulation of the Documenta topic for March,
"Is Modernity our Antiquity?

This is the first question. It is fairly obvious that modernity, or  
modernity’s fate, exerts a profound influence on contemporary  
artists. Part of that attraction may stem from the fact that no one  
really knows if modernity is dead or alive. It seems to be in ruins  
after the totalitarian catastrophes of the 20th century (the very  
same catastrophes to which it somehow gave rise). It seems utterly  
compromised by the brutally partial application of its universal  
demands (liberté, égalité, fraternité) or by the simple fact that  
modernity and coloniality went, and probably still go, hand in hand.  
Still, people’s imaginations are full of modernity’s visions and  
forms (and I mean not only Bauhaus but also arch-modernist mind-sets  
transformed into contemporary catchwords like “identity” or  
“culture”). In short, it seems that we are both outside and inside  
modernity, both repelled by its deadly violence and seduced by its  
most immodest aspiration or potential: that there might, after all,  
be a common planetary horizon for all the living and the dead.