The Art World Expands

This makes me ponder the artist role in society as one of critic and instigater of change. The rapid expansion has not only made art difficult to discuss but also more challenging to create. I believe that one of the roles art plays is to incite discussions , but I also wonder how far discussions can really take us. It seems that sometimes actions without to much premeditated thought can be some of the more liberating and advancing devices. Allan Kaprow thought that sometimes artistic happenings began to loose some of their power once they were repeated. There is something intrigueing about an event that only happens once and cannot be duplicated, an anomaly in such a copy cat world. more to come.....
One drawback to publicaly funded art is that the artist is more accountable to the patrons for the content and message of the art. It seems that artists struggle to exist in the gap between telling people what they want to hear and what they need to hear. It is not an easy job to expose humanity to the flaws and issues of society.this social response began after WW 2 when people questioned what it meant to be a modern human. With Pollock and Rauschenberg the canvas traveled from the wall to the floor to the table then out in to the streets with Kaprow and Oldenberg. Photography further blurred the boundaries of high and low art and caused people to question what was the most ral representation of reality.With photography 2d reality became much easier to alter and therefore transform.There arose adivide between hyper slick representation and ultragritty documentary work. Artist began to mimic the media format more and more to express ideas., which made art more available to the masses. In some ways this created more respect for handcrafted objects and things not machine made. The ability for more people to own cheaper copies of peviously exclusive art further aided the dissemination of art into mass media. Photography also allowed us an insight into time peviously unexplored. We are now able to freeze and capture fractions of a secound and return to scrutinize those moments again and agian. The real danger her is that folks accepted photos as real representations and believed them to represent truth. Many artists politicians and other media masters used this for control over opinions.
This was taken even further when Virtual reality became mainstream.I remember working at CyberMind VR center in SF and being a virtual witness to thefirst marraige ever in Virtual time. Since i was spending so much time in the virtual world my dreams began to take on a VR quality. Everthing has become super saturated and super sized nothing is subtle anymore.we even use plastic surgery to enhance/exaggerate our bodies. David Lachapelle comments on American popped culture from an ironic, just poking fun bubble gum asetheic. his subjects allow themselves to be lambs to the hysterical photographic slaughter of individual, cultural self-importance. There seems a carnival element to the world and lachapelle is some ringmaster.
The ability to mass produce visions of reality caused a kind of homogeny to grow in the world. Languages vanish at an alarming rate, species are lost in scramble for more better faster resources to support our consumer life styles. Hmans ourselves are becoming more like machines while at thes ame time discovering through more open info excahnge about remote ancient people who have never even seen a photo of themselves. Artist have more responsibilty to critique a world evolving at hyper speeds. Information has the ability to travel extensive distances in millisecounds. THose who control the media control the people. Fidel castro said when he resigned power that "now he just wanted to be a soldier in the battle of ideas."
People now seem to need some sort of media validation for theirr existence-videos photos-reality tv.Individuality is now a commodity and fleeting form we must nurture daily to not become absorbed by the dominant media paradigm.TheManifesto for Incomplete Growth is a good starting point for taking charge of your own mind and perhaps creating ripples that will empower others to exert their will into the fray.
Artsit are always the first to step up, no we see more and more risking themselves and their audience in order to subvert the mechanistic paradigm dominating culture. Artist must extract meaning from a flatline societ and insight individuals to act and not be apathetic.Everything matters but nothing counts, you will always get a new moment to affect change, it can start at any time at any place and for what reasons =we decide.