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Loris Greaud Tremors Where Forever Frequency of an Image, White Edit

As a continuance of the previous post; challenging the space(s) we live in.

Nicolas Bourriaud is proposing a new term ‘Altermodernism’ announcing a new era following Postmodernism to describe aesthetic proposals critically engaging with an increasingly global context. The world we experience today is routed by an infiltrating and ever extending communication apparatus, surpassing travel and physical migration giving birth to simultaneous attendance, a stratified landscape multiple localities.

As designers we relate more and more to ideas around migration, notions of detachment and dispossession as implications of our transient lives. Inevitably this is signified through a shift in spatial design practice. According to Bourriaud, Altermodernism “is characterized by translation and specificity, unlike modernism of the twentieth century, which spoke the abstract language of the colonial west” (TATE ETC. – Issue 15/Spring 2009, p72, article by Andrew Hunt) proclaiming standardisation in the production of cites, architecture and artefacts. Altermodernism provides an explorative platform in search of a 21st century modernism. Very different from Postmodernism setting us after or outside the historic period of modernism.

As Bouriaud claims; as we acknowledge the end of postmodernism we step out of historical suburbia and re-enter history in the search of a new modernism. This new modernism will unavoidably be something larger, something more inclusive than 20th century modernism in that the latter was predominantly focused on western traditions. This new modernism is also clearly forward looking, explorative and interested in the unknown as opposed to Postmodernism in clear relation to a previous.

In the current state of an increasingly global context we will have to look at a totality of continents, inclusive of a manifold of localities crossing a variety of cultures all drawn by intrinsic histories.

Thus what can drive a shift in spatial design practice?

Within the perimeter of Altermodernism spatial design practice can critically question an ever-increasing globalisation of ideas, forms and products. Through this questioning a strategy of singularity as opposed to totality in terms of design can be deployed. This can enable spatial design practice in search of emplacement (or the creation of places as described by Marc Auge and Michel de Certeau) by setting up design environments of connective-ness (signified by endless varieties of tools such as drawing, modelling, writing, performance, etc) negotiating a network of singular identities yet emphasising a relational proximity to others in a clustered landscape of absolute vastness. In the set up of these connections, as we search for the re-creation of places, it will be important to exclude any form of nostalgia. Any return to a previous will be counter the concept of the forward looking, the explorative and the unknown. We don’t look back onto the singular timeline of history but acknowledge history as a network of intersecting timelines where it becomes increasingly more difficult to be outside or after history yet appealing to sustain within the mesh of time.

Article by Ephraim Joris

Altermodern is the title of the Tate Triennial 2009.

PREVIOUS EDITORIAL ARTICLES 

·          Design, Reuse, Team work; September 19th, 2008

·          Challenging the space(s) we live in; November 19th, 2008