Re: [-empyre-] Modern Antiques

["Lucio Agra" <lucioagra@gmail.com>]

There are two or three ideas here I would like to comment:

 G.H. first (and really interesting) text:
"2. The game of art or art as a language game. People often talk about
this as "art for arts sake" or art that is about other art.  An amusing
project is to read some of the 10,000 plus manifestos produced by
artists in the 20th century.  This list is part of that tradition."
Here there more than 1 aspect, if GH allows me to say it. Art as a
language game is a very broad expression that could be considered to
refer even to some texts of Western Tradition, from Plato's Banquet to
Rabelais. I think know I what he is meaning with that, but it also
does not necessarily means "art for arts sake" - as he say - which is
another procedure, also present in Eastern and Western Civilizations.
But if we consider the newness (historically speaking) of concepts
like "art" (substituting greek "techne") and "literature" (from the
Latin "litera" going ot Italian "lettera" of french "lire;lettre")
what about the idea of "art for art's sake"?

"3. Perhaps the most interesting thread and the most telling is
performance art. This is a creative process that is not tied to theater
and depends on media tools (cameras, recorders, computers) to verify or
document its' existence."
Beautiful consideration. I will show it to my students if GH allows me
to. I feel myself all in favour of such an idea (as Christophe)

Christophe says:
"... we now have to consider the inverse trend: going back to older
media, plain objects, furniture... but, hopefully, without dropping what we
learned from net.art." which is something I totally disagree but also
says "I'm very much influenced by this ironical idea of the "retour
des choses" as
we would say in french." which I - thinking in a "corsi-ricorsi"
movement- totally agree with.

But care have to be taken if you really want to be post-modern because
the idea of return was explored by more than one artist in high
modernism. I immediately think on Ezra Pound and his idea of "living
tradition" and "paideuma". Personally I think this idea can still be
used, shifted from its original authoritarian context, but perhaps it
is another discussion...

The question of humanization of tech have been discussed in many
symposiums but it always seems strange to me. At least computers are
the most human machine I've ever heard about. It has a screen that can
only be "viewed" by frontal human eyes, over a keyboard, something
that can be typed only by fingers that have the abilities to do it.
BTW, "digital" comes from Latin "digitum" which means "digitum" (the
remark is from one of the main poets of my country Decio Pignatari).

Mediated performance could mean something that would offer a new
vision over the modern tradition... I leave it as a suggestion to
think...
best
Lucio BR
PS: I typed the message in plain text, as I understood it is the
requested way. Please tell me if I am wrong and should send it Rich
formatted.

Now, in the case of manifestos, oh yes, here we have something that
reminds revolution, industrial revolution and so on. I always remember
that well know case about Futurism. So many manifestos should have a
reason. Well, a manifesto is a piece of text short enough to become a
leaflet thrown over a city from a plane. I think it something studied
by Jeffrey Schnapp, a specialist in the field who published some
interesting books about it.
I think it is a beautiful remark that the list of 20th cent.
manifestos is part of a tradition, something Octavio Paz ("Los hijos
del limo") and Harold Rosenberg put out as a paradox: modern
tradition.