Pages

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

reaching back -- art’s future

I think everything I write here should make perfect sense somewhere down the line, hardly worth saying out loud, so I’ve said all along. People won’t start changing their minds consciously, but as conditions change people think differently about art, and a new audience arises. It’s a coming. The current administration represents tectonic readjustment, an earthquake, and we’ll all put it back together on the other side, with new personal priorities and civic concerns. Good or bad, it was necessary, history explains, and it could go different ways from here. 

In my favorite possibility what is most ‘human’ becomes increasingly valued, 3-D printers having fabricated the couch, the rug, the refrigerator. Based on the notion that rarity determines worth and that value tends to consolidate into portable forms, a new interest and appreciation for art might one day spontaneously occur all around, average folks each imagining it was their idea. There’s this new term in art ‘self-verifying,‘ roughly translated it means the viewer is allowed to participate, to apply their own experience and use their own judgement, instead of relying on what far off authorities decree. Once an art both more accessible and visually articulate finds an audience, my favorite possibility, along with almost everyone else's, becomes more plausible. 

Humanity teeters over digital quicksand, could be superseded by bots or turn big-brother fascist with obedience implants, but on the good side there’s art, up close, personally verifying, and constantly being upgraded in waiting rooms and offices, in apartments and houses. Art can’t save us but art could be the way we save ourselves, helping us to feel more confident in our own humanity, aware of our standing as citizens and sure of what we like. 

No comments: