“There is a growing
interest amongst contemporary artists, worldwide, in quotidian phenomena and
the power of relatively simple gestures. It constitutes a rejoinder to
played-out operatic tendencies and an overloaded academic (often
pseudo-academic) discourse in visual arts, engendered by early
postmodernism.[...] Emphasis here is placed on the significance of every day,
and any day, not on the distance between now and arbitary past and future dates
in Western history.”
Jonthan Watkins ‘Every
Day’ 1998
All the myths of everyday life
stitched together form a seamless envelope of ideology, the false account of
the workings of the world. [...]How does one address these banally profound
issues of everyday life, thereby revealing the public and political in the
personal?
Martha Rosler ‘For An Art
Against The Mythology of Everyday Life’ 1979
The ‘everyday’ has
long been an all encompassing theme within art. This breadth has seen the term
employed in a multitude of different and often contradictory ways. Such
assumptions can undermine artworks and curatorial stratergies which rely on or
are categorised under a universal understanding of the term. If, as Rosler
suggest, the everyday is a political space which artists must act within, do
the efforts of a curator such a Watkins deny the potential of such a space?
A reading of the everyday which
has been especially significant within contemporary practice (including my own)
has been that which Michel de Certeau outlines in his work The Practice of
Everyday Life. The distinctions made by de Certeau between the strategic and
the tactical grants the very ‘practices’ of everyday life with a
political agency, even those which may be typically seen as poetic. De Certeau
describe this process using the term ‘making do.’ In short, it is
the creative use of heterogeneous material by the individual to combat the
homogenising power of the institution.
Arguably, significance of the
everyday to contemporary art now appears to lie in its tactical nature. Perhaps
the natures of these tactics are now even more pertinent given the recent
global financial crisis – the art world is by no means immune to its
effects. As Francesco Bonami pointed out in 2005 “ “Today we are
facing another economic meltdown and, in its wake, a new form of artistic
resistance will probably surface in the next few years. Galleries will change
their spots once again, presenting themselves as born-again restaurants, bars
or community centres. Tactics of survival will once again replace more
structured strategies. Art practice will probably free itself again from
grounded institutions to avoid the risk of being archived too soon as a
period’s token in museums’ collection storages. The everyday will
regain prominence. In fact, Michel de Certeau pointed out that in its
slipperiness lies a good deal of the everyday’s power.”
Francesco Bonami, ‘Now Is
For Ever, Again’ 2005
Photo caption/credit:
Second floor of the pavilion
building at the 28th Sao Paulo Biennale entitled Open Space
edwardiansnow@gmail.com
“There is a growing interest amongst contemporary artists, worldwide, in quotidian phenomena and the power of relatively simple gestures. It constitutes a rejoinder to played-out operatic tendencies and an overloaded academic (often pseudo-academic) discourse in visual arts, engendered by early postmodernism.[...] Emphasis here is placed on the significance of every day, and any day, not on the distance between now and arbitary past and future dates in Western history.”
Jonthan Watkins ‘Every Day’ 1998
All the myths of everyday life stitched together form a seamless envelope of ideology, the false account of the workings of the world. [...]How does one address these banally profound issues of everyday life, thereby revealing the public and political in the personal?
Martha Rosler ‘For An Art Against The Mythology of Everyday Life’ 1979
The ‘everyday’ has long been an all encompassing theme within art. This breadth has seen the term employed in a multitude of different and often contradictory ways. Such assumptions can undermine artworks and curatorial stratergies which rely on or are categorised under a universal understanding of the term. If, as Rosler suggest, the everyday is a political space which artists must act within, do the efforts of a curator such a Watkins deny the potential of such a space?
A reading of the everyday which has been especially significant within contemporary practice (including my own) has been that which Michel de Certeau outlines in his work The Practice of Everyday Life. The distinctions made by de Certeau between the strategic and the tactical grants the very ‘practices’ of everyday life with a political agency, even those which may be typically seen as poetic. De Certeau describe this process using the term ‘making do.’ In short, it is the creative use of heterogeneous material by the individual to combat the homogenising power of the institution.
Arguably, significance of the everyday to contemporary art now appears to lie in its tactical nature. Perhaps the natures of these tactics are now even more pertinent given the recent global financial crisis – the art world is by no means immune to its effects. As Francesco Bonami pointed out in 2005 “ “Today we are facing another economic meltdown and, in its wake, a new form of artistic resistance will probably surface in the next few years. Galleries will change their spots once again, presenting themselves as born-again restaurants, bars or community centres. Tactics of survival will once again replace more structured strategies. Art practice will probably free itself again from grounded institutions to avoid the risk of being archived too soon as a period’s token in museums’ collection storages. The everyday will regain prominence. In fact, Michel de Certeau pointed out that in its slipperiness lies a good deal of the everyday’s power.”
Francesco Bonami, ‘Now Is For Ever, Again’ 2005
Photo caption/credit:
Second floor of the pavilion building at the 28th Sao Paulo Biennale entitled Open Space
©Lucas Bambozzi, 2008. Reproduced with kind permission.