Sebastian Bertalan on Tue, 23 Oct 2001 20:01:02 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-ro] WTC Disaster |
In history, aggressive cultures have survived and spread; biological evolution continues on cultural level. This change started a few thousand years ago. Many cultures were simply erased and a few strong and aggressive ones took their place, geographically speaking. This process goes on. But since the scale amplifies (for more than 2000 years now) the initial (evolutionary) function perverted and reached a point in which it threatens the "victor" culture(s) themselves. This is the most general context. All say that this is not a war of cultures, maybe meant sincerely. Of course this is necessary for keeping coolness. But it is in fact a short-term tactic. We certainly do have a struggle between cultures, although not a declared war; it is a struggle for power and control. It was repeated again and again after september 11 that we must not allow 'our values' to be changed, that we must defend 'our values'. _Our_ values are part of _our_ culture. It is a struggle of cultures: we want the whole world to adopt our values (human rights, democracy, neo-liberalism, etc - we are convinced that our values are the best). Referring to Art, look at the world-wide Art scene: Art is entirely controlled by western culture. An exception seems to be African Art; paradoxly the economically weakest continent kept its own character best and in spite of its political and economic weakness is very present. Anyway, maybe this is not a paradoxon. The WTC disaster will not impact directly on Art. Except singular instances Art - tendencies of Art - does not react directly to whatever events or catastrophies do happen. Art is sensible to changes in large context. The WTC Disaster is of course a landmark in the very actual context, but it is not a trigger. It is often compared to Pearl Harbor (World War 2) or the sinking of the "Lutetia" (World War 1). Although a comparison of these acts of war to the WTC disaster (also declared as an act of war) is problematic, they seem to have in common that they tag outstanding, easy-to-remind marks of processes and series of large-scale events which did and do affect significantly intellectual culture and Art. The "Lutetia" and Pearl Harbor did not impact on Art, but certainly well did what came after and "changed the world". New intellectual substance can be expected. This means of course a benefit for the Art market, but that is not really interesting. As Maurizio Cattelan wrote: It might be the beginning of something. ------------------ sebastian bertalan @ .de _______________________________________________ Nettime-ro mailing list Nettime-ro@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ro --> arhiva: http://amsterdam.nettime.org/