The Painted Protest, by Dean Kissick
The safe, vapid art of this era did more to signal that a place was ready to be gentrified than to express any specific idea. Art-as-politics has been devastating for both politics and art.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
What’s striking … is the apparent shift from a politics of reason to a politics of experience… In the eyes of many, personal experience has become the new way of being at home in the world. It’s like the bubble that holds the foam at a distance. Experience nowadays trumps reason… We’re led to believe that sensibility, emotions, affect, sentiments a... See more
Benjamin H. Bratton • Touchlessness
Sixian added
#1: ON SURREALISM
Why does lunacy and irreverence feel so resonant right now? One of the principles of surrealism is an expression of the absurd in order to question power and I’ve similarly noticed Gen Z quietly raging against the madness of the world with content that is surreal, weird and oft-uncomfortable.
Why does lunacy and irreverence feel so resonant right now? One of the principles of surrealism is an expression of the absurd in order to question power and I’ve similarly noticed Gen Z quietly raging against the madness of the world with content that is surreal, weird and oft-uncomfortable.
Victoria Buchanan • Vol.17: Victoria Buchanan: Surrealism, World Saving Luxury + Fractional Work
Keely Adler and added
Here we see a really pivotal moment of change, when art must become something that does not make people uncomfortable, so that they will spend money. The kind of person who is expected to consume art is transformed in the mind of the producer. The people who might very possibly love being expanded by what they see are never given the chance. They'
... See moreSarah Schulman • The Gentrification of the Mind
Like our own imagination, art can wander off, seeking out the edges, the borderlands, the mysteries. Indeed, this autonomy is art’s power and part of its emotional appeal. But this very ability to separate from everyday material life may also make art impotent in trying to shape the world from which it has escaped. At most it can be a nudge or a su
... See moreGeoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Lael Johnson and added
For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.
Anastasia Berg • On the Aesthetic Turn | The Point Magazine
Keely Adler and added