Locality is old news in the realm of food – everyone (hip) goes to the farmers market and not just the grocery. In the last few weeks with flash mobs attack Cleveland, Atlanta and London, crowd sourcing and local movements have even take on a negative cast. But in visual art and cultural organizations, locality has at once an old history and a new one.
I very hesitantly offer the hypothesis that visual art and architecture has a stayed rooted in locality while other art forms – music, literature – have more easily been disassociated (for better or worse) from their physical origins (though there are now reactive movements turning back towards the local). Literature can and has been passed around more quickly from place to place. You can read Lolita in Tehran or Henry James in Idaho or Bannana Yoshimoto in Brussels. But it’s hard to move Bilbao or Falling water, but it’s also harder (though not impossible!) to move a Richard Serra or Tara Donavan piece to New Dehli. These works I select for their modernist, scale-based physicality in particular. That kind of installation/sculpture/etc. appears to be particularly resistant to displacement. That kind of art also dominates our cultural vision of what contemporary art is like. So perhaps it should come as less of a surprise that visual art has quickly taken to the local movement.
I’d like to keep thinking about this movement in “fine” art above and beyond the DIY culture. Yes, I know, craft and art need not be and cannot be entirely distinguished, but it does seem worthwhile to consider whether there is something special happening in that aspect of culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment