[Reader-list] March on -empyre- : Is modernity our antiquity?

[Christina McPhee]

March 2006  on -empyre-  soft-skinned space:


Is Modernity our Antiquity?  (for  the Documenta 12 Magazine Project)


Please join the conversation this month at www.subtle.net/empyre,   
with special guests



Christoph Bruno (FR), Erik Kluitenberg (NL), Christiane Paul (US),  
Dirk Vekemans (BE), and as moderator/guest, Christina McPhee (US)




Is Modernity our Antiquity?


It is fairly obvious that modernity, or modernity’s fate, exerts a  
profound influence on contemporary artists. Part of that attraction  
may stem from the fact that no one really knows if modernity is dead  
or alive. It seems to be in ruins after the totalitarian catastrophes  
of the 20th century (the very same catastrophes to which it somehow  
gave rise). It seems utterly compromised by the brutally partial  
application of its universal demands (liberté, égalité, fraternité)  
or by the simple fact that modernity and coloniality went, and  
probably still go, hand in hand. Still, people’s imaginations are  
full of modernity’s visions and forms (and I mean not only Bauhaus  
but also arch-modernist mind-sets transformed into contemporary  
catchwords like “identity” or “culture”). In short, it seems that we  
are both outside and inside modernity, both repelled by its deadly  
violence and seduced by its most immodest aspiration or potential:  
that there might, after all, be a common planetary horizon for all  
the living and the dead.

--Roger Beurgel, artistic director of Documenta 12


A bit of background:


Documenta, the festival of art that occurs every five years in  
Kassel, has invited all of us at the -empyre- list to participate in  
a formal discussion around
three questions, or leitmotifs,  throughout this year.  This month is  
the launch of our participation in this project, which will continue  
in July and November 2006, again with topics selected by the  
Documenta team.   All over the world, some seventy online and print  
journals will initiate dialogue around three core questions; the  
results will integrate into Documenta 12 itself next year in Kassel  
(summer 2007).   FMI  http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/ 
leitmotifs.html  A special thanks to Alessandro Ludovico of http:// 
neural.it. Alessandro is an empyre list member and former featured  
guest (2003), who has honored us by  bringing -empyre- into the  
Documenta project this year.


join us at http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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