Having explored some of the ways in which approaches to the spiritual have changed in the century since Kandinsky, the session that begins today will shift the focus of our discussion away from the spiritual in general and toward its embodiment (or disembodiment) in art specifically. Over the next two days, we’ll be exploring the changing shape of art, for which I pose the following questions as points of departure:
- How has the once-privileged relationship between abstraction and the spiritual fared since Kandinsky? Does this connection still hold a century on?
- Does music remain the paragon of spiritual art, as Kandinsky so fervently believed?
- What is the current status of “the object” (i.e., art’s material embodiment) in contemporary spiritually-inclined art?
- Is there currently a renewed emphasis on place or site in contemporary art that might reflect a new (or newly recovered) awareness of the spiritual?
- Is there a unique role for time-based media such as film and video in contemporary art that aspires toward the spiritual?
- What role might there be for digital technology in expressions of the spiritual in art?
- How do recent developments in artistic practice (e.g., “post-studio” practice, art-as-ritual, and trans-disciplinary work) relate to the spiritual in art?
I've been interested in the trend in modern graffiti towards abstraction and performance as evidenced in work by contemporary artists such as Augustine Kofie, Futura and Doze Green, as well as social networks like Graffuturism. Creators of and participants in real and virtual spaces, are challenged to interpret various forms of representation by virtue of various relationships to other elements internal to our shared sign systems. Artists in this knowledge context are tasked to liberate the body in real time and space... Doze Green’s current body of work consists of paintings that translate complex metaphysical concepts that resonate with Afrofuturism, such as the “possible manipulation of energy and matter to create a timeless space.”
ReplyDeleteRoy Ascott argues (Drain mag) that virtual syncretism which is historically linked to religion and culture can also "contribute to our understanding of the multi-layered worldviews - material and metaphysical - that are emerging with our engagement in, amongst other things, ubiquitous computing and post-biological technology." We can see this manifested in modern graffiti around the world as well as in new media forms. The rituals and procedures of sacred ceremonies from other cultures find their equivalent in Western codes and protocols of computer technology.
This syncretic liminality is a parallel process of the bringing together of disparate technologies (interactive and digital, reactive and mechanical, psychoactive and chemical), and new rituals of communication (mobile, online), and forms of community (the Net), is seen in our society, and indeed remains open to the incorporation of the older arcana.