[-empyre-] Is Modernity our Antiquity? fugue

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

dear -empyreans-

Like the Well Tempered Clavier, -empyre- plays in Bach mode, thus  
it's time for a tuneful restatement  of the theme.


Is Modernity our Antiquity?  :  a discussion for the Documenta  
Magazine Project


"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."

--Roger Beurgel, artistic director of Documenta 12



Let's  indulge momentarily in a look at the meta level of this  
discussion.  Let's start with 'seduced by its (modernism's)  most  
immodest aspiration or potential:  that there might, after all, be a  
common planetary horizon for all the living and the dead' .

  An event horizon? the next (N)?

Regarding the discourse about (N) or the 'next' thing to 'succeed'  
postmodernism and modernism -- one catches a glimpse of a gyre  
shining out there at the edge of the mind.  Ah, on closer examination  
(zoom in, examine, pan (must be in VRML) !   A  Hegelian model?  to  
whit,
transcendence achieved through a third path dialectically generated  
from the interplay of two previous models (the spiral).

(Don't you agree,  Hegel is perfect for VRML. Kind of old fashioned  
and difficult, crusty, a little louche).

May we truly spin back upon / into our Antiquarian modernism then ?   
(I can almost see the torques and explosions in 3D  animation).

As if Modernism is our antiquity, even an archaeology, but land  
mined, with Maya generated exploding layers (VRML wasnt agile enough,  
got to get into some sophisticated software, learning curve is tough  
though).

The 'common planetary horizon for all the living and the dead' brings  
to mind, not only  Revelations from St John to Teilhard de Chardin,  
but on the level of culture and environment,  the end game which  
humans are already playing out via  global climate change, as Joy  
Garnet and Henry Warwick of this list frequently observe.

Sometimes it seems all these questions will be as dust and shards in  
the tells of Iraq after the 7 degree rise in terrestrial and marine  
temperature surely comes.

Looking back,  'bureaucratic' model of database art may recall, for  
some, standardisation and hierarchical regulation by a power elite.    
Eric observes irrational undercurrents in the coupling of  
transcendent aspirations and technology ...
http://www.debalie.nl/dossierartikel.jsp?dossierid=10123&articleid=4012


> ,deeper layers of motivation that inform the creation and the wider  
> adoption of these technologies will continue to elude us. To grasp  
> these rather hidden motives it is necessary to excavate some of the  
> seemingly irrational undercurrents that accompany much of the  
> visible history of technology, and thus to probe more deeply into  
> the realm of the mythological.


Christina