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FACING FORWARD Art & Theory from a Future Perspective UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Facing Forward: Art and Theory from a Future Perspective Folkerts, H.; Lindner, C.P.; Schavemaker, M. Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Folkerts, H., Lindner, C., & Schavemaker, M. (2015). Facing Forward: Art and Theory from a Future Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (http://dare.uva.nl) Download date: 13 Dec 2018 FACING FORWARD Art & Theory from a Future Perspective Edited by Hendrik Folkerts / Christoph Lindner / Margriet Schavemaker AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS COLOPHON This book is published in print and online Amsterdam University Press English- through the online OAPEN library (www. language titles are distributed in the US oapen.org). OAPEN (Open Access Publish- and Canada by the University of Chicago ing in European Networks) is a collabora- Press. tive initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic resAearch by aggre- gating peer reviewed Open Access publica- tions from across Europe. PARTNERS ISBN Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 978 90 8964 799 3 University of Amsterdam E-ISBN Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam 978 90 4852 623 9 (SMBA) NUR De Appel arts centre 670 W139 Metropolis M COVER DESIGN AND LAYOUT Studio Felix Salut and Stefano Faoro Creative Commons License CC BY NC (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/3.0) All authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam, 2015 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, re- cording or otherwise). TABLE OF CONTENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 A CHANGE OF DIRECTION An Introduction to Facing Forward: 7 Art & Theory From a Future Perspective Future Tech AMBER CASE 21 An Anthropology of Cyborgs, for Cyborgs MANUEL DELANDA 29 The Use of Genetic Algorithms in Art Future City CHINA MIÉVILLE 43 Future City REM KOOLHAAS 55 Countryside Future Image JAMES ELKINS 65 Thought on the State and Future of the Image JALAL TOUFIC 73 The Future of the Creative Image Future Museum IWONA BLAZWICK 83 Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Institutions So Different, So Appealing? HANS BELTING 93 The Plurality of Art Worlds and the New Museum Future Freedom HITO STEYERL 111 Freedom from Everything Freelancers and Mercenaries PAUL CHAN 119 Duchamp, or Freedom: A Comedy Future History TABLE OF CONTENT Future History DAVID SUMMERS 129 Is Future Cultural History Possible? AMELIA JONES 139 Live Art as “Future History”. Performance and the Archive, a Case Study Epilogue: Future Future JUHA VAN ‘T ZELFDE 151 #thenewspacerace PATRICIA PISTERS 152 Facing Backward: Images from the Future TIMOTHEUS VERMEULEN 156 The YBAs Are Dead. Long Live the YBAs! HASSNAE BOUAZZA 160 Democratizationand the Internet MELISSA GRONLUND 161 Text Me This Picture MATTHIJS DE BRUIJNE 162 For Whom Are We Working? METAHAVEN 161 Guide to a Better Internet DING REN 166 The Elegance of an Empty Room MARIA BARNAS 172 On News Desks and the Need to Get Lost ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors are deeply indebted to the speakers and authors of Facing Forward, who generously shared their insights, perspectives, and research with our public and with us. This publication and the larger project to which it belongs could not have been realized without the (continuing) support of the Mondriaan Fund, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, and the SNS Reaal Fund. We are grateful and delighted to have been given the opportunity to continue the institutional collaboration between the Stedelijk Museum, the De Appel arts centre, the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis), the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, W139 and Metropolis M, and to de- velop discursive platforms in and beyond the Netherlands. The editorial board members that worked with us on the conceptualization of the lecture series — Jelle Bouwhuis, Ker- stin Winking, Domeniek Ruyters, Ann Demeester, and Tim Voss — also have our deep- est gratitude for the wonderful collaboration and the generous sharing of their knowl- edge and expertise. Thanks are also owed to the following people: Annelies Dijkstra and Bureau Pedel, Menno Dudok van Heel, Sam-Geer van der Klugt, Eloe Kingma, Paul Koopman, Jowon van der Peet, Stefanie Schenk, Jeroen Sondervan, and Felix Weigand. INTRODUCTION 7 A CHANGE OF DIRECTION An Introduction to Facing Forward: Art & Theory From a Future Perspective It is as if the invisible light that is the darkness of the present cast its shadow on the past so that the past, touched by this shadow, acquired the ability to respond to the darkness of the now. Giorgio Agamben, What is the Contemporary?, 2009. The future is there… looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, 2003. INTRODUCTION 8 I Expectations and anticipations of the future are part of our everyday lives. Contemporary visual culture is inundated with a kaleidoscope of futuristic utopias and dystopias in which the longing for a seamless interface between the virtual and the real, as well as the desire for release from the constrictions of time and space, are recurrent themes. Based on speculative predictions and creative scientific arguments, a pervasive visual rhetoric of acceleration and progression, as well as damnation and destruction, shapes our sense of the future. The project Facing Forward started with a collaboration between five institutions: the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, the De Appel arts centre, W139, the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, and the art magazine Metropolis M. Having previously organized the lecture series and publications Right About Now: Art & Theory in the 1990s (2005/2006) and Now is the Time: Art & Theory in the 21st Century (2008/2009), the organizing committee decided to take the final step in this timeline and turn its attention to the far horizon. Informed by a shared interest in the role that history, speculation, and utopianism play in the field of contemporary art and design (as well as the larger context of global, socio-economic, and political developments), a selection of seven themes emerged from the conversations of the initial organizers. These eventually shaped the seven lecture and discussion events — collected in this volume of essays — publicized under the banner Facing Forward: Art & Theory From a Future Perspective. A great number of internationally renowned speakers were invited to reflect on the proposed themes during often sold- out events, which were presented at the Oude Lutherse INTRODUCTION 9 Kerk in Amsterdam in 2011/2012. Yet, however compelling our desire as organizers to go beyond the framework of contemporary events and the current interest — well-nigh obsession — with history, it is obviously an illusion to think that we can escape the past by means of a turn towards the future. As Walter Benjamin described it, progress is an angel positioned with its back to the future and blown forward by the wind of history. Nevertheless, our aim is to turn Benjamin’s angel around to face forward. We do this not with the goal of ignoring the present and the past. On the contrary: the idea is to face forward in order to change the present and confront our relationship with the past. Contemporary art in the beginning of the twenty-first century has remained largely aloof from this growing fascination with futurity. One could even claim that it has been excessively fixated on, and oriented towards, the past. Archiving, nostalgia, heritage, commemoration, memory, re-enactment, reconstruction, and documentation have been popular themes and methods in the contemporary art world. At the start of this new millennium, artists, curators, and theorists have frequently adopted a retrospective view in which they set out like archeologists to excavate, preserve, and interpret the past. Theorist and curator Dieter Roelstraete has described this trend as “the historiographic turn”.1 However, taking refuge in history carries the risk of a certain blindness. Looking back — as opposed to a focused, sustained examination of the contemporary moment and its afterlife — can obscure the view of both the present and the future, making it more difficult to be open to the creative/critical potential of the unknown and the unexpected. And yet, such openness is precisely the orientation that is needed in these turbulent times of financial crisis, technological reinvention, political uprisings, and much more. INTRODUCTION 10 The book Facing Forward: Art & Theory From a Future Perspective, springing from the eponymous lecture series, counters the retrospective approach by shifting our attention towards art and theory on the horizon of the future. In particular, the book draws attention to a number of important social and artistic questions that are inextricably bound up in the hybrid “discourse of the future”.
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