July 22, 2022
"This Biennale, which runs through Sept. 18, is serious. Very serious. It verges on humorless...."
"[The curator's] statement notes that today’s 'profusion of sprawling, monumental exhibitions' mirrors 'the material excesses' of global capitalism, and asks: 'So why add yet another exhibition to this?'
The answer he reaches is that art — perhaps uniquely — can reclaim our attention from algorithmically enforced social control.... Mai Nguyen-Long’s 'Vomit Girl' and 'Specimen' sculpture series... grapple with the aftermath of Agent Orange bombings in Vietnam....
Even blunter are Mayuri Chari’s vulvas sculpted from cow dung... address the shaming of women’s bodies in India amid conservative Hinduism’s obsession with purity.... This Biennale is... all over the place — one must study the scatter in an attempt to understand the collision that produced it.
Its contradictions, I suspect, reflect those of the 'decolonial'.... Whereas decolonization in the classic sense was a political, territorial project with no inherent grievance against modernity, today’s 'decolonial practice' is about changing systems of knowledge — a woolier, potentially endless project. This Biennale is presented as a gathering of 'decolonial strategies.' The task... is tending 'all of the wounds accumulated throughout the history of Western modernity.'... This Berlin Biennale feels... overloaded by its own conceptual apparatus...."
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27 comments:
I'm guessing it's run by women. Finally they're being taken seriously!
'all of the wounds accumulated throughout the history of Western modernity
Wtf? The period of "Western modernity" (roughly late 1600's to now {others say it ended with WW II}) has seen the most tremendous advances in the standard of living for humans in the entirety of our existence. In fact it improved more in that period than it did in the entire 295,000 years before it. It improved in every way possible, beginning with food, shelter and clothing, which are cheaper, better and more widely available worldwide than ever before. Then consider political and economic freedom which we all take for granted today, but did not exist before Western modernity. The evil of slavery was recognized for the first time, and the practice nearly wiped out worldwide. The sad remnants of slavery today are not the responsibility of the West. Then consider the Arts and Sciences. Entertainment. Life expectancy, mortality.
There is not an ancient Chinese emperor, African prince, Meso-American emperor, Egyptian pharoh or Roman emperor that wouldn't change places with the average person today in a heartbeat.
Word.
The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, to be exact. Also see one of the subplots of his last novel, Back to Blood (not up there with Bonfire of the Vanities or A Man In Full, but still worthwhile). And the chapter on the arts from Steven Pinker’s masterpiece The Blank Slate.
Even blunter are Mayuri Chari’s vulvas sculpted from cow dung...
And she's not being accused of Transphobism?
Wrestling with itself...
Butt-head: Beavis wrestles with his manhood.
Beavis: Heh-heh... Yeah, and I usually win.
When I'm seeking moral authority, Berlin is my first destination.
Siddhartha?? Herman Hesse smiles!
Ha, my 5-year-old could have decolonialized that!
It's art. It's not serious, it's silly. It's generally meaningless since it's all introspective and not a whole lot more interesting than watching a bunch of mentally ill losers gazing at their prodigiously pierced navels.
It's just something for the chattering classes to chatter about in between lopping off their testicles and breasts in the name of mental fashion.
Modernity or death. Choose wisely, grasshopper.
This seems the wrong venue for a work of this deadly seriousness. Why not the Stasi Headquarters?
" ... art — perhaps uniquely — can reclaim our attention from algorithmically enforced social control.... "
This morning my attention was reclaimed by cleaning the gutters and roof valleys of our three bedroom fortress against the ravages of nature and bad art. Time certainly better spent than reading about, let alone viewing, a study of female anatomy represented by bits cow excreta.
Ugh!
Petulant pissants playing in their own puke.
I'll pass.
Yes, nothing says 'art' vulvas sculpted from cow dung. I saw a Renoir, a Pissarro, and a Monet last week. They are pikers compared to the 'woolier decolonial' approach taken by this exhibit.
I think that as Renoir, Pissarro, and Monet were products of and representative of their time, so is this show in Berlin. These are not pretty times.
Isn't art a mere white supremacy tool?
It's your baby, you rock it 🎶
When they have destroyed everything that Western culture created they can sit in the dung piles and be happy. Idiots.
Sounds like a great place to see on vacation.
When does Octoberfest kick off?
Western art is running out of steam, and it looks like non-Western art is having the same problem. That may be because it's no longer truly non-Western. It plays the role that guilty and self-loathing Westerners expect it to play. Go deep into the jungles, deserts, or mountains, not to art schools or biennales, if you want to see something new or real.
Everything‘s better with my vomit on it!
"Even blunter are Mayuri Chari’s vulvas sculpted from cow dung... address the shaming of women’s bodies in India amid conservative Hinduism’s obsession with purity...."
Is this art working in the direction the artist intends? For me, "vulvas sculpted from cow dung" don't challenge the obsession with purity but make it seem like a good idea.
It seems to me that everything worth doing in art had already been done by sometime last century, and contemporary “artists” are simply irrelevant. The only way they have left of gaining attention Is to shout “Look at me!!” In more and more obnoxious and offensive ways.
Maybe the museum eco-terrorists will show up and glue themselves to this dung instead of ruining real art.
I was in Berlin 9 days ago. Went to several museums. Didn't see, hear about or notice this particular trash. Too bad because if I had known about it I could have ignored it on purpose rather than accidentally.
I realize this isn't a parody, but what would you change if it was intended to be parody?
Huh?
jaydub, what were the highlights of your visit to Berlin? (And how was overseas travel in general?)
My wife and I were there for a few days in '19.
Get back to me when the previously colonized stop mining their grievance, and begin creating their own equivalent to Western Civ.
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