TBA :Model for Lecture to be given in a Public Restroom (verbatim).
“I’d like us all to agree (or not, do whatever you want, I don’t care)”
Post-Modernism (PM) as defined by Merriam-Webster: of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one <postmodern times> <a postmodern metropolis>
2 a: of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)
Got it? Good. Post-Modernism as a phrase emerged in the late 19th century as critics were attempting to label new styles in the arts. At that time PM was just a term. When Martin Heidegger comes along he screws up the show and attempts to define the term and extrapolate the implications of its meaning and affect on the culture (and by this point in the early 20th century the western world was swimming in modernism, and the ideas of what a modern style of living could be.) Modernism, at its most basic, was a humanist form of thinking that proclaimed the imaginative power and scope of the human mind could improve all areas of life through focused experimentation and practice. Therefore to be a modernist you believed in the authority of the individual creation and the rightness, or correctness of said creation. New forms of expression were championed (abstraction, jazz, surrealism, futurism, ism, ism, ism…) precisely because these forms were new, experimental and deeply wound up in expressing the "truth" of the human condition.
Refer back, if you will, to the definition of PM, specifically second entry. Now, assuming you trust my summation of modernism does this definition do any more for you? You’ve heard this term Post-Modernism thrown around yes? (and to say thrown around I mean to say stuck, like unwanted gum, willy-nilly to whatever’s near it.) With all this in mind does Post-Modernism mean something now? Are we all certain and clear on it’s function as noun/adjective/noun? No. You in the back making noise, can you tell me what it means? No? How ‘bout what it means to you? No? You got nothing? Well, neither do I. But I think, at least for the moment I might be able to come up with some kind of working definition.
Postmodernism: The ideology of rejecting ideology. A movement (supposedly) that allows all forms of expression and creativity equal ground without being trapped by linear thought or a rigid dogma, symbols are freely interchangeable, meaning does/doesn’t/might exist, and everything (words, ideas, objects, etc…) are potentially redefined and transformed on the whim of the creator. (Addendum: the creator may neither say something or say nothing. (S)He holds no responsibility to the creation.)
Alright, so is PM a bullshit term used to describe the state of art today? No. PM exist and it’s happening. Post-Modernism as an idea is much more interesting than it seems. Imagine a church with no ceremony – or only ceremony, at the same time or never! Imagine a writer who looks like he does fancy things with punctuation on Thursday and on Tuesday looks like he forgot to pay attention in High School English! This is the actual effect of PM on the environment and it’s great. Everything is on the table, there are no rules and we’re in charge.
PM, in practice in the arts, is a direct fuck you to the “heroes” of the modern era all those big painters with big canvases and their even bigger egos. They embarrassed themselves for the rest of us so we wouldn’t have to. Those folks got into specifics and rigidity - We’re into fluidity and the mirage; the look of the real is better than the real.
In the arts the need to label and categorize forms of expression is an ever-present evil (look at music and the way critics place bands into invented genres). PM by definition rejects this concept. Many complain about a lack of cohesion in the arts, or a movement per se, but why does that matter? Why must we dress everything up in loose language that never actually enlightens those who are engaged? At the end of the day these terms exist to serve themselves (we got something to talk about something because we got these words and we gotta use ‘em).
Post-Modernism is anarchy, and by (the improved) definition it abhors authority, and this party is only getting bigger – the island is overrun and Piggy’s been dead a long while. I’m coming to the show but first I gotta find my conch shell.
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