Defining The New Art Scene (August 2005)

Been sick and more than away from the visual arts
this past month. I think I'm desillusioned by the whole thing,
but I can't tell yet if i is the people systematizing the way we are invited to
watch art or the artists that seemingly embrace that systematization
that got me so down lately.


I'm fed up with museums and their guards, for one thing.

There is a prospect in the circumventions of museography
(the "topography" of museums, to borrow a popular expression)
that engulfs artistic expression in a certain set of politics that are
hardly if ever adressed by artists.


Why do artists want so much to be exhibited in museums?
What is the signification of this need ? How does the museum
experience shapes an artwork? Is it really the "best of all
possible worlds" solution for an art piece to be exhibited in a museum,
or if not what could it be ?



The Artforum issue of this month contains an excellent
article about artists (some very well known) who attempt
to produce and exhibit art away from the confinements of
museums, or rather, making art that contradicts conceptually the usual
need of the white cube or museum space (stage) to exist (aka la Fontaine de Duchamps),
on the very opposite depending on outbound, exterior contexts to be fully
experienced or grasped, and this, without having necesseraly to
fall into the ageold category of land art, or respect any of the
obligations of the site-specific.


Basically, an art of "the buddhist temples", if I can make
an analogy with the early asian temples that were built
from the inner of caverns, oppositing a tradition of building
"artificial" spaces filled with treasures and figurines.



Actually, the Artforum article presents many of
these artists as redefining the tradition of "land art",
but to me, some of these artists have not much
to do with nature, but much more to do about
reconfiguring the experiences of life.



Can we be neolithic again ?


I cannot link a specific "linkography" page
about artists going into this direction, yet.


But I can link an hero of this new tendancy:

http://www.zittel.org/


and one community project she has unleashed.




which is sort of an arty-intellectual version of this (that you all must know about):





In Quebec where I'm settled they are groups like
Farine Orpheline
and Atsa which follow similar
paths, organizing various outbound projects without having
to indulge any sentiment of constraints
about site-specifity (I remember a recuperation parc
designed by Atsa that was hardly site-specific).



And I know they are countless events out there who claim site-specifity
in order to get grants to unfold their events, but whose actual only goal
is simply to present art anywhere it's not a gallery or museum.
(you recognize yourself)


Maybe someone should compile a list of links, not so much
of events, but of artists or art movements that specifically
work on creating art that stand at the outbound of institutions
(and need that ourbound to exist).



The Artforum magazine is here.
(You can dig it in a public library and just read it.)



Cheers,

Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com