Postmodernism

Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Art Since 1900, "1984" by Hal Foster
Intro to The Postmodern Condition by Jean Francois Lyotard
Appropriating Appropriation by Douglis Crimp





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Summary Cloud:
Political possibilities, modernism political application- appropriation to montage,
class issue to mapping issue, moving forward after gaining a sense of orientation to the new capitalist world. Addressing the medium and the deficiency of photographic and visual strategies.
Metanarrative challenged and a new incredulity of metanarrative arises.
Photography challenges the insularity of the art world by blending the realms of art and non-art. Art answers this crisis by addressing it, appropriating appropriation, making non-art art.
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Lyotard says the future is one of incredulity toward meta-narratives and that science has aided this progression of mini-narratives that challenge the meta. In class, we discussed how science is a metanarrative as well, but science seems to be the metanarratives of mininarratives, thus incorporating any mini-narrative into itself. No mini challenges the meta. All minis contribute to the meta-narrative of science. Science is the collection of all the minis, the empirical observations and experiences, and the digestion of them into a deduced truth. If science is such a powerful examination into our worlds truths, and is capable of not only challenging all other meta-narratives, but also incorporating within itself all the existing mini-narratives, perhaps the next reasonable step is for art to make way to science. Is science not the new art of the future then?
Martha Rosler's The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems seems to be a rather straightforward analysis of the inadequacy of the linguistic system and the visual. It seems to attempt a more scientific pursuit than an artistic one. The same goes for Victor Burgin's Photograph, July 1969, which is twenty-one photographs of twenty one continuous sections of floor boards. His piece is like an experiment, laid bare for observation, for the testing of hypotheses with a possible conclusion.
Jameson says that the appropriate response to the new political culture is on of cognitive mapping. This practice too falls back in line with the scientific/artistic pursuit of cartography.
Postmodern strategies seem to seek a technique and aim closer to those of the scientific. What will emerge is still unknown, but what we are looking for is (more specifically) known. We are looking for the answers to our location cognitively and politically. We are looking for the inadequacies and strengths of linguistic and visual representation.



























a visualization of Jameson's cognitive mapping for the purposes of disalienation, gathering of existential data, and to "regain [our] capacity to act and struggle." With images of real weather balloons, ocean floor mapping bathyspheres, and cartographers mapping our relation to the world in social and spatial scales.