Below is a response to Module 3 of the course AAD 550: Art and (Sustainable) Society:
What is the aesthetic of our time? In what ways do practices, ideas, narratives, or ideologies associated with this aesthetic depend on transmediations?
When I consider “the aesthetic of our time”, I picture layers, collaged bodies of images and meanings that are always already moving, becoming, and transforming, perpetually re-appropriated, re-fashioned, recycled, and reused (DIY! Sustainability!) to create anew, and to draw our attention to the infinite meanings of all things.
Stacia Yeapanis discusses this brilliantly, as posted on Henry Jenkins’ blog Confessions of an Aca-Fan (March 11, 2009), in her response to YouTube’s request that she take down her video comprised of appropriated scenes from her takes on feminism and the fight against cultural patriarchy via fandom and postmodern theory in practice.
Becker’s (Ch. 7) early discussions of how audiences shape meaning of art works, and how artists and works don’t exist in vacuums or insulated bubbles, provides a framework for understanding how all art works are part of larger art worlds which are part of larger worlds still.
My very first blog post for this course discussed the work of the Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org), an anti-capitalist, culture jamming collective (I’m surprised the Billboard Liberation Front doesn’t list them as a partner) that works to reveal the corruption of world governments, corporations, and other representatives of the free market economy and the ways in which it systematically exercises oppression.
To me, the Yes Men’s projects and interventions embody the ways in which art today–or the art of any day as it is appropriated today–moves fluidly among sectors of power, culture, and creativity, revealing these worlds to be intimately connected and interwoven in a way that opens up the political and social ramifications of our choices and the decisions of those in power, and the ways in which we experience, consume, participate in, and make sense of those bodies of power surrounding us (copyright law, YouTube, and Fox News are just a few of the bodies that disenfranchise individuals and block participation and access via sanctioned, accepted power, as explored in several of the assigned media for Module 3–Good Copy, Bad Copy, Jenkins’ blog). The Yes Men’s work epitomizes an aesthetics of layered meanings–visually, aurally, performatively, and beyond. The ephemeral nature of their projects, which continue to exist beyond the time and space of the initial or primary performances and videos, only adds to the ways in which their work can die and be reborn through transmediated conversation and communication.
The Yes Men are only one example of this type of anti-institutional, anti-patriarchal, anti-Art art (Melissa mentions an aesthetic of anti-aesthetic in her post, which I think is right on) that transcends definition and fixed meaning. Also in Ch. 7 of Art Worlds, Becker discusses the death of art works and the politicized scenarios, causes, and effects of such deaths.
Death is an intriguing lens through which to view the aesthetic of our day in terms of postmodernism, infinite readings of texts, layers, collages, and transmedia as a whole (can transmedia be whole?); we might think about the contributions to art works and art worlds as constantly dying and being reborn through appropriation, via fandom or otherwise; or perhaps this could be seen as permanence (death) enveloped in, or saved or resuscitated by, ephemerality, transience, and becoming.
Claude Cahun (http://quarterlyconversation.com/claude-cahun-disavowals) is one of my very favorite artists. A surrealist who, like many women, was denied official membership in the Surrealist artist group because of her gender, Cahun was one of the first artists to use a merging of photography and collage. She created collage- and photo-based auto-portraits (the French term for self-portrait) that explored how one’s identity is ever-shifting, never static, and deeply layered, stacked high with meaning mediated through images preserved in our memories, but which, like all memories, are constantly altered over time. Cahun’s work was discovered much later on, and has only relatively recently been discussed in critical, academic, cultural, and art historical circles. Cahun died on the English island of Jersey, off the coast of Germany, where she had lived reclusively with her female partner after having been imprisoned and threatened with execution for her involvement in Resistance activities during World War II. Somewhat appropriately, Cahun’s images have experienced a posthumous rebirth, in a time when art worlds began to more openly discuss art, texts, bodies, and identities (art worlds) as constantly shifting.
So, the aesthetic of our time is illustrated for me by the work of both an early-20th century 2-D photo-collage artist and a currently active conceptual collective. This is telling.
