The New Museum goes metamodern?

The New Museum goes metamodern?

Eu desejo o seu desejo / I Wish Your Wish (2003) is installed in the lobby gallery as part of the exhibition "Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other". Visitors are invited to select ribbons printed with a wish to tie around their wrists. When the ribbon falls off, tradition has it that one's wish will be fulfilled. Visitors may write another wish and place it in the empty hole. This work of art is based on a similar practice that takes place at the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim (Our Lord of the Good End) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

Image: Rivane Neuschwander, I wish your wish (2003). Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

Strategies of the metamodern

The modern is associated with politics as diverse as utopism, formalism, functionalism, seriality, art for art’s sake, the flaneur, syntaxis, restless-ness, alienation, streams of consciousness, the cinematic apparatus, cubism, Reason, trauma, mass production, and schizophrenia. The postmodern tends to be associated with strategies as varied as dystopism, late capitalist flexibilisation, the ‘end of history’, formalism, différance, relativism, irony, pastiche, the waning of affect, consumption, multi-culturalism, deconstruction, poststructuralism, cyberspace, virtualisation, pluralism, parataxis, the ‘unrepresentable’, and interesse. The French cultural philosopher Jacques Rancière has further suggested that both signify a democratisation of the relationship between the sayable and the visible.

Now, the metamodern too is expressed through a variety of mind-sets, practices, art forms, media and genres. Certainly, it has been expressed most visibly...

Etymology of the term metamodernism

The prefix 'meta' has acquired something of a bad rep over the last few years. It has come to be understood primarily in terms of self-reflection - i.e. a text about a text, a picture about a picture, etc. But 'meta' originally intends something rather more colloquial. According to the Greek-English Lexicon the preposition and prefix ‘meta’ (μετά) has several meanings and connotations. Most commonly it translates as 'after'. But it can also be used to denote qualitative 'changes' or to designate positions such as 'with' and 'between'. In Plato's Symposium, for example, the term metaxy designates an ontological betweenness (we will return to this in more detail in a later post). The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the following description:

prefix meaning 1. "after, behind," 2. "changed, altered," 3. "higher, beyond," from Gk. meta (prep.) "in the midst of, in common with, by means of, in pursuit or quest of," from PIE *me- "in the middle" (cf. Goth. miþ, O.E. mið "with, together with, among;" see mid). Notion of "changing places with" probably led to senses "change of place, order, or nature,"

When we use the term 'meta', we use it in similar yet not indiscriminate fashion. For the prefix 'meta-' allows us to situate metamodernism historically beyond; epistemologically with; and ontologically between the modern and the postmodern. It indicates a dynamic or movement between as well as a movement beyond. More generally, however, it points towards a changing cultural sensibility - or cultural metamorphosis, if you will - within western societies.

Image: Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (2006). Courtesy White Cube.

Previous uses of the term metamodernism

We feel we need to justify our use of the term metamodernism. In a future post we will explain its etymological origin and its relationship to the Platonic/Voegelin concept of metaxis. Here we will briefly refer to some of the term's previous uses. Although we are the first to use the term metamodernism to describe the current structure of feeling in terms of an oscillation between a modern hope and a postmodern disappointment (a mutual re-signification, if you will, of one by the other), we are not the first to use the term per se. It has been used in writings on law, politics, economics, data analysis and architecture as far back as the 1970s. Most significantly, it has been used with some frequency in literature studies. Here it has been applied in order to describe a post-modern alternative to postmodernism as presented in the works of authors as far apart as Blake and Guy Davenport. The literary theorist Alexandra Dimitrescu, for example, describes metamodernism in terms of the integration and interconnectedness of contrary approaches. We would like to stress however that our conception of metamodernism is by no means aligned to these notions, nor is it derived from them. It is in so far related to these notions that it too negotiates between the modern and the postmodern. But the function, structure and nature of the negotiation we perceive are entirely our own and, as far as we can see, wholly unrelated to the previous perceptions. Metamodernism as we conceive it does not integrate; but neither does it exclude. It oscillates. That is to say, it both-neither integrates and-nor excludes - desires a sens and-nor doubts of the sense of it all, longs and-nor laments, constructs and-nor deconstructs...

Image: Kaye Donachie, Early Morning Hours of the Night (2003). Courtesy Maureen Paley

One Bryant Park, NYC

Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that contemporary architecture, like so many other aesthetic practices, is no longer postmodern. Although one could also point towards somewhat more stylistic changes (and we will definitely do so in later posts), the end of the postmodern is most clearly signaled here by the return to commitment. The growing awareness of the need for sustainable design has led to an ethical turn in the attitude towards the built environment. Roof gardens and solar panels are heavily subsidised, carbon neutral buildings and ecologically friendly neighbourhoods are widely commissioned, and, yes, even entirely green cities are being designed from scratch. Necessitated by a competitive market, urged by demanding politicians and inspired by the changing Zeitgeist, architects increasingly envision schemes for a sustainable urban future. The Bank of America Tower (One Bryant Park, NYC) might be considered to be amongst the prime examples of this development. Perhaps its form is not cutting-edge; but the technology certainly is. You'll find a video here.

Image: One Bryant Park. Courtesy World Architecture News

Ragnar Kjartansson

Although Ragnar Kjartansson's work is often characterised by a melancholy sadder than the most postmodern pessimism, it never becomes apathetic. And while it tends to be as ecstatic as modern optimism can get, it never turns fanatic. Performances like The End (2009) and the truly inspired Sorrow Conquers Happiness (2006) are ironic, parodic and frequently pastiche. But at the same time, they are sincere, sentimental and heartfelt. In The End, Kjartansson takes up residency in the Venice Biennale for six months. He drinks beer. He smokes cigarettes. And he paints images of a man in his underpants. One beer after the other, one painting after the next. In Sorrow Kjartansson sings one line over and over. The notes change, the tone alters, but the line remains the same. The End and Sorrow resemble the child that takes the joke too far. The joke loses one meaning but gains another, as yet undefined one (irritation? tragedy?awkwardness? confusion? slapstick comedy? sincerity? naivety? etc). They are as absurd as they are instantly comprehensible; and if they alienate, they also attract. Indeed, like so many metamodern art works, they oscillate between a desire for sens and a doubt about the sense of it all.

Image: Ragnar Kjartansson, The End (2009). Courtesy Luhring Augustine Gallery

What is metamodernism?

As we define it, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and the postmodern. It oscillates between a modern desire for sens and a postmodern doubt about the sense of it all, between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, order and chaos, purity and corruption, clarity and ambiguity, between naïveté and knowingness. Indeed, metamodernism is an oscillation. It is the dynamic by which it expresses itself. One should be careful not to think of this oscillation as a balance however; rather it is a pendulum swinging between two poles. Each time the metamodern enthusiasm swings towards fanaticism, gravity pulls it back towards irony; the moment its irony sways towards apathy, gravity pulls it back towards enthusiasm.

Image: Selja Kameric, Dream House (2002). Courtesy Gallery Tanja Wagner

Introduction to metamodernism

The postmodern years of plenty, pastiche and parataxis are over. In fact, if we are to believe the many academics, critics and pundits whose books and essays describe the decline and demise of the postmodern, they have been over for quite a while now. But if these commentators agree the postmodern condition has been abandoned, they appear less in accord as to what to make of the state it has been abandoned for. On this blog, we will seek to outline the contours of this discourse by looking at recent developments in architecture, art, and film. We will discuss practices and works as diverse as the grand buildings of Herzog & de Meuron to the installations of Bas Jan Ader, the collages of David Thorpe, the paintings of Kaye Donachie and the films of Michel Gondry and so much more!

Image: David Thorpe, Do what you have to do (1998). Courtesy Saatchi Gallery.