To Art, Or Not To Art - Opinion

The overtly pervasive trend of nauseating palatability in contemporary South African art and literature in particular, is becoming aesthetically unsettling, to say the least. These shelves filled with neurotic adolescent scribbles punted as a new wave of creative energy leaves me perturbed and disillusioned as both a writer and filmmaker intent of being a consistent and authentic purveyor of unadulterated memory. And please let me first explain what it is I mean by 'palatability'.

First, I am concerned by the oversimplification of textual narratives in our storytelling, be it in books or films, and an overall negation of artistic rebellion pervading our art-forms. Secondly, the dissemination of insidious self-censored regurgitation of common profanities and romanticized depravity are what has 'mass appeal'. I mean most books now read like self-help manuals written in characters for dyslexic teens, with glossaries of misspelled words in the name of 'decolonizing' the oppressor's language.

But what does this trend reveal about the caliber of our literary and artistic prowess as a generation said to enjoy unprecedented technological freedoms (including spellcheck and Thesaurus)?

Should I assume that technology and its prescriptive character is beginning to deplete our imaginative reservoirs to a point of 'creative ex-cerebration' as artists? Are we now facing an advent of production methods geared solely towards corporatization of art and gentrification of literature in the name of 'making a living'?

At tragic an epoch such as this, when hashtags and memes can sway public opinion and sentiment, tech platforms need be scrutinized, kept in check, hopefully by artists who are not embedded agents in our battle-zone where raw and honed art should be a weapon.

Sadly what we find is that our smartphones, with their screenwriting software, seem only to alter and remodel grammatical devices which employ to engage my assumed critical audiences.

Nowadays, we observe schools of writers intent on writing for 'online consumption', and technology, while purporting to enable those writers and other artists more access to audiences, it seems to in turn dictate the types of audiences that engage with that art, while 'inadvertently' curating that art for those 'unspecified' audiences' palates.

The more the 'likes', the better your art is - that seems to be totality of it, or unless an algorithmic critic editing your blog's grammar says otherwise. But we often fail to ask how structures of tech platforms impact our art practices, and how these platforms commercialize our output by mere interaction through 'posts'.

Perhaps to return to the pitfall of over-simplification we can interrogate the abundance of non-intriguing metaphors and recycled idioms we find in anthologies being launched, with unbridled arrogance by 'showbiz poetry marketeers' (as Ginsberg would have said) and their prized wordsmiths. With their digitized summaries of endless complicity in the marginalization of truly revolutionary work, our puppet -art/literary-scene scavengers are 'dumbing down' art, and some artists are even complacent in this sacrilege. Many are becoming instruments of financial investment or obscure neurotic despots backed by foreign cultural agencies in the name of philanthropy.

When will we begin to value personalized narratives steeped in a collective awareness that our inner imaginings are being deleted or rephrased?
What really hinders South African artists of late, from ever traversing our barren mind-scapes, beyond the bizarre and true potential of unfiltered genius? Is it an innate shortage of vocabularies with which to define our complex, yet paralyzed inner-engines or have artists succumbed to the mercilessly numbing trample of the 4th Industrial Revolution?

Will our canvases and sculptures be only remnants of discordant caricatures, of plagiarized strokes and eco-friendly oils for kitsch tastes of patrons in Gucci coats? Will our pages be mere redemptive billboards for those who abandoned the human condition for glasshouse harangues about a litany of ism?