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Main Project
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Fulya Erdemci and Rosa Martinez
AFTER ALL
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site and dates
“You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one”
Imagine, John Lennon
The fall of Soviet Russia, which was organized around the idea of Utopia, marks the end of History. Now, we are living at this limit where History is no longer pulled by an all-consuming idea that can give shape to our present. The collapse of this system of History is a catastrophic experience for us as there is no Future without the Utopia that links the past to the present and present to the Future. On the other hand, this end is also a revelation as the Western progressive History negated “now” by trapping it in between a reconstructed past and a determined Future. Maybe now, when History comes to an end, there appears a possibility for an “unconditioned” present to emerge. Provided that the present is freed from any historical construction, any framework of references to a given meaning system, is it possible for us to have a radical experience of the present? How can we think of this experience? Does it mean an extreme desire for living that brings about a hedonistic materialism or a regret for what we have lost that leads to an agonizing hopelessness? Neither one nor the other.
In the lack of Utopian heights and in the midst of nothingness, zeal for technology and market has replaced the function of Utopia, which opens up the Future in a deterministic way. While technology and science made it possible for us to experience things, like the birth of stars recorded through the Hubble telescope, that were beyond imagination a couple of decades ago, the development in the technology of visual systems also works as a major denominator for the market economy. Driving force behind the technology or science is not anymore for a better future for humanity, but for creating new products and brandings. Microsoft becomes a neology for tomorrow.
Conversely, although new technologies and science have an inevitable role in the market economy, they also have extensive impact on the social sphere. For instance, the Internet began to be utilized as a platform for social forum and organization as in the cases of anti-globalist actions and the radical demonstrations by the third generation Algerian immigrants in Paris. Likewise, these new technologies have equipped us with unique perceptive devices while endowing the artists with different possibilities to unfold our transformed perceptual experience of the World through novel visual languages. However, it is not only the creation of new technologies that is embedded in the market economy, but the artistic production is as well. What is the degree of the impact of market (including the sponsorship) in the emergence of new “trends” in the art world? Although their existence is ontologically different as art intends to decipher while advertisement is based on mystification, is there a correlation between the languages of advertisement and artwork? Can an artist live outside the market conditions? The alternative way of existence for an artist can be to live through public and private institutions, residencies and the like. But, in that case, the artist has to involve either international politics or the policies of transnational companies. Can there be other ways?
After the dominance of abstraction, which had a therapeutic effect after the war, the late 60’s and early 70’s witnessed artistic experimentations and trials to create the “otherwise” in terms of medium, method and discourse at the limit of Modernism. Even though the laboratory conditions still exist, the spirit has been over long ago. With a violent amnesia, the forms and discourses of the 70’s torn apart from their context and aim became empty signifiers of being political and experimentalism, and were converted into postmodern styles. The so-called “freedom” that appeared as a result is like the puzzling conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice on direction as there is no one way to go as well as no single truth to believe. What kind of a feeling of emergency can give today a direction to Art? Before nothingness after all, what is the urge?
We intended to let our sensors resonate with the vibrant transformation that the city of Moscow has been going through and “After All” was inspired by this radiant city as well as the general concept of the 2nd International Moscow Biennial “Footnotes on Geopolitics, Market and Amnesia”. “After all” may refer to many things: neologisms, new geopolitics, or John Lennon, or The Berlin Wall, or September 11th, or Modernism and post-modernism but does not definitely aim at proposing an end or a beginning. It does not seek out another generalizing overall-claim. In a world where only micro-utopias and personal revolutions seem possible, it is just a modest attempt for a fresh start on the question of how to continue.
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