Previsiones sobre el arte, 1964 - 2012 - 2084

ENTRE LA UTOPÍA Y LA DISTOPÍA

Entre 1956 y 1974 el artista holandes Constant Nieuwenhuys se dedicó a trabajar en un proyecto arquitectónico y visionario para la sociedad del futuro. A ese proyecto lo llamó New Babylon, se componía de dibujos, litografías, fotomontajes, ensayos y películas cuya intención era criticar las estructuras sociales de entonces.

Aquí dejo los dos últimos párrafos del manifiesto que Constant Nieuwenhuys escribió en 1964:

"The Homo ludens of the future society will not have to make art, for he will be able to be creative in the practice of his daily life. He will be able to create life itself and shape it to correspond with still unknown needs that will emerge only after he has obtained complete freedom.

New Babylon represents the environment Homo ludens is supposed to live in."

Antes de ayer recibí un E-mail de Or Gallery (Galería de arte asentada en Vancouver desde 1983) en el que me invitaban (en su sede de Berlín) a participar en la película titulada Institutions by artists, que está siendo realizada por el sociólogo Pelin Tan y el artista Anton Vidokle.

Su declaración de intenciones, en 2012, es esta:

"We feel that during the past decade or more, conversations about the artist-run or alternative sphere have predictably remained within a narrow dialectic between discussion of state support vs. the art market. What is particularly discouraging is the lack of imagination within this discussion: a certain inability to invent and pursue new scenarios, new models of organization. While the rise of alternative spaces was intimately connected to the counterculture and anti-war movements of the 1960s, it seems that forty years later this has become a thoroughly institutionalized sphere in which artists are gradually ceding the initiative and creativity that animates such spaces to curators and other art professionals. We would like to try to approach this conversation a bit differently with you, by setting it in the future.

For example:

It's 2084. Money has been abolished and people exchange information products as tokens of exchange. States have become ungovernable and borders have been redrawn by powerful individuals. Art has fully colonized life and every aspect of daily existence has become aesthetic. What used to be museums have now become data centers. Being is perpetual self-design. No one has a profession. There is no more work. A group of people may meet in a city that was once called Berlin, and there they will discuss the possibilities for independent cultural production..."

Pelin Tan & Anton Vidokle