“Perchance memory,
this enigmatic, unphysical object, is but an aperture into the elsewhere. an
unaltered alternate we never can pin down – of that which time is smashing
together in an eternal cauldron of the NOW”.
What is art to me, in an era of digital interfaces and what
seems to hinder our art practices from traversing beyond the palatable; towards
the bizarre potential of unfiltered imaginations?
I ponder this question, more complexly as I grow old,
wondering if surviving the onslaught of the fourth industrial revolution will
be a long-shot for artists?
Is it because our contemporary art practices seem possessed
by an innate shortage of complex vocabulary to define our paralyzed inner
engines, or have artists themselves become numbed by the trampling speeds of
technology infused social mutations?
It appears that of late, our canvases are only torn by
discordant caricatures of plagiarized brush strokes and eco-friendly oils mixed
for kitsch walls of patrons. Our books have become redemptive billboards served
as sedatives for those who abandoned the human condition for glass houses
harangues about a litany of isms?
And there is another riddle - hallucinatory euphoria of
instant exposure that social media purports to afford the artist.
This momentary desktop activism only shoves into the face of
a society that has already discarded art into the peripheral spheres of social
engagement, a simplistic world-view based on simplified art; which in turn is
taken for a concrete reflection of our times.
When the art world should resist all whims of
corporatization and commodification, it has rather opted to mirror the
self-serving narcissism of its creators, in that all patronized art seems to
yearn to be property of the elite. Across a diverse range of art-forms, we are
noticing a lackluster attitude and disregard of esthetic continuity aligned
with social revolutions.
Dumile Feni’s audacious liturgy of curvatures, Dyani’s lucid
aural dissidence in music with a broad spectrum of lush sounds, and even
Gwala’s haunting voice diligently pacing minds toward some arcane ritual with their
spliced memory – all these revolutions ignited by geniuses of yester-year,
seems to have vanished from the contemporary psyche, and therefore post-millennial
artistic expression.
But why this unnerving scarcity of unadulterated artistic expression
of dissent, and only an endless series of recycled spectacles to appease the
status quo? Be it music, film, and the fine arts, art seems to be a mere tool
of erasure, dis-remembrance and glossing over traumatic psychic violence of a technologically
sinister age of photoshopped fake news and memes that make charity campaigns
from horrors?
Perchance the answer might lie in another question, and that
is: “What is the most potent method of suppressing traumatic memory content
derived from disconcerting social participation?”
Forgetting.
Yet forgetting is inevitably a process of replacing
divergent memory content with the more palatable.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment