I’m happy to tell you that my review of No Order: Art in a Post-Fordist Society has just been published in the latest issue of Metropolis M, a great art magazine here in the Netherlands. Unfortunately for those who cannot read Dutch – which include myself – the article has been translated to Nederlandse. No worries, though, I’m posting the English version below. Check it out and, in case you do read Dutch, go buy the magazine.

No Order. Art in a Post-Fordist Society

The arts / politics debate in the Netherlands has become increasingly heated this year, even before the infamous arts and culture budget cuts were announced in June. Apart from these much-contested developments, in fact, the right placement (or replacement) of art within the realm of the contemporary capitalist society has been a popular topic throughout the year. In the past months, many of the most interesting actors in the Netherlands – from Amsterdam’s SKOR Foundation and SMART Project Space to Eindhoven’s Van Abbemuseum – have tried to critically address the issue through conferences, lectures, and exhibitions. These initiatives have asked crucial questions such as: How does art escape the logic of the capitalist regime? Or, more bluntly: What’s the use of art today?
No Order comes as a much-needed resource in tackling different aspects of this discussion: art and politics, the politics of art, political art. The yearly bookzine was coordinated by Italian critic and curator Marco Scotini, director of the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA, in Milan. Published in both English and Italian, the first volume is a thick 400-page collection of articles – some written for the occasion, others collected or adapted from elsewhere – that embraces a variety of topics, all consistently related to the current role art is playing in the political and economic spheres. Its three confusingly-named sections – Time Zone, Play Time, and Time Machine – respectively address the issues of geopolitics, education and market, and archiving in the current contemporary art landscape.
The first part tries to outline an alternative geography of the international scene. After an introduction by map-expert Lorenza Pignatti, the contributions discuss the situation in emerging countries like Russia, Romania and Turkey. Although Vik Havránek praises the extraordinary alternative art scene in Czech Republic, the general impression is that public money is mostly supporting nationalistic art (Croatia), while the private remains on the safe grounds of commercial interest (Russia, Turkey). The articles alternate with visual contributions, ranging from tag clouds to infographics, from charts and satirical comics. To conclude the section, artist Minna Henriksson, in conversation with Jasna Jaksic, explains her own practice of mapping local art milieus.
The middle section critiques art from three perspectives: Education, Market, and Display. The first aspect is dealt with through the work of several artists: Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt explores George Maciunas’ obsession with archiving historical facts, while more contemporary artists like Chto Delat? and Etcetera… discuss social and philosophical issues as they mingle with theorists and grassroots activists. No Order’s take on art and the market is dominated by Italian writers, from Paolo Caffoni’s statement that art has the “symptomatic” potential for cultural self-determination, to Maurizio Lazzarato and Christian Marazzi’s analysis of art management and capitalism. Some of the most interesting contributions in this section are signed by magazine director Marco Scotini, who shares its two cents on both Market and Display. In one article the curator critiques the Manifesta foundation, which only works with curators and art professionals for a conveniently short amount of time, thus tapping into the creativity-infusion that increasingly appeals to European cities. In another he comments on the 11th Istanbul Biennial, which has proved its virtue by publicly declaring and explaining its financial structure for a true “politicization of culture.” On a lighter note, Parisian cooperative Société Réaliste offers a visual documentation of its “random curating” practice, a fun experiment for those willing to put their conceptual and art-savviness to the test.
No Order’s third and last section is focused on archives, documentaries, and their narrative potential. One of the most interesting features is probably the dialogue/retrospective on Angela Ricci Lucchi and Yervant Gianikian’s films, in which the videomakers discuss how old images can be used to talk about new events. Another intense contribution is Harun Farocki’s analysis of the footage showing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu’s trial and execution, in which he breaks down how editing intrinsically is a political tool.
Given the wide variety of topics covered and the heterogeneity of the authors – curators, artists, theorists – No Order is a compelling read. Between a magazine and an anthology, the alternate density of visual materials and thick blocks of text might be a little off-putting at times, but it works. The questions I mentioned above find only a partial answer through the examples provided, which are in-depth and stimulating indeed, if not always immediately relatable to one another. Certain notions – such as art’s inability to become independent from the capitalist market – eventually become redundant, but there are a few hard-hitting quotes, like Roger M. Buergel’s “A good exhibition is supposed to provoke a crisis.” Maybe No Order doesn’t provoke a crisis itself, but is a good description of one.

It’s been a while it’s come out, but those of you with access – or willing to pay the fee – can read my review of Bill Moggridge‘s Designing Media on the Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing at Oxford Journals. Go take a peek.

The Populist Imagination comes in a timely moment. The 20th issue of Open, the cahier on art and the public domain published by NAi, is a collection of essays dealing with “the role of myth, narratives and identity in politics”. Contributions include authors as diverse as Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau, Italian writer collective Wu Ming, American media scholar Stephen Duncombe, and French literature professor Yves Citton, among others.
The subject of populism – and, more generally, myth-making – is especially urgent these days, mostly because of two world-scale phenomena: the emergence of political figures and movements that are strongly characterized by a mythological appeal, and the mass-mediated channeling of collective imagination sustaining such figures.
On both ends of the political spectrum, both President of the United States Barack Obama and Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders represent media-savvy interpreters of widespread heart-felt emotions, supported by a matching rhetorics of desire and imagination.
Be it the change promised by Obama or the evil forces of communism which Silvio Berlusconi claims to protect Italy from, from the United States to Europe we’re all experiencing a return to epic narration in politics.
Internet, social media, and a general decentralization of political discourse have made populism a widespread phenomenon, giving unprecedented space to previously marginal factions. Geert Wilders’ PVV party in the Netherlands, Lega Nord in Italy, and the Tea Party in the US, show how similar rhetorics have caught on throughout the Western world.
These neo-epic narrations are all rooted in a fictional fascination for a glorious past and the identification with the leader’s actions as the deeds of a hero, usually struggling on behalf of his (selected) people for ideals such as freedom, change, or national identity. Through an analysis of different examples of populism, Open 20 sets out to break down the dynamics of the populist appeal. Why is populism so strong? And is it so bad after all?
According to Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau – interviewed by Rudi Laermans – populism is a necessary counterpart to institutionalism, which on its own would create a political paralysis. Dutch sociologist Willem Schinkel even argues populist desire is the only critical tool for democracy, trying to bring presence in its empty representation. After all, people come before democracy, which is about mediation before goals.

Laclau’s “internal frontier” and “empty signifier” echo throughout the book, working as conceptual pivots. In both European right-wing and South American left-wing populism, “the people” works as a basic signifier, complimented by an empty one that is filled by politicians with terms like “the market” or “dream”. Regardless of each politician’s brand signifier, in order to succeed they have to connect to “the people” – that is, a kindred electorate that is also wide enough to be politically influent.
It is through an epidemiocracy (Citton), a spinozian economics of affects, that simplified, formatted myths – conservative or emancipatory – allow a “mobilization of abstractions” (Duncombe). We shouldn’t take populism as demagogy, though: the latter is a top-down circulation of myth, the former is bottom-up and has positive qualities to it.
In particular, mythopoiesis is a very powerful bottom-up myth-making practice, which Wu Ming explain in reference to the Zapatista movement and the figure of Subcomandante Marcos, as well as their own experience. While the Italian collective’s account of the ambiguities and dangers of direct involvement in mythopoiesis sounds like a cautionary tale, Stephen Duncombe’s “dreampolitik” chapter focuses on the importance of utopian thought in the progress of society.
To be true to itself, the book’s final chapters are very visual and provide a sort of populist glossary, including very practical examples of imagery manipulation by populist movements like Italy’s Lega Nord.

While maintaining a relatively consistent theoretical framework, Open 20: The Populist Imagination is clever in illustrating how populist dynamics give way to different and opposite results. Instead of denouncing the emergence of populism as an often right-wing, xenophobia-driven movement, the authors put the phenomenon in a much wider perspective, recognizing its momentous importance and progressive potential. Just like the media that channel it, populism has room for resistance and activism, too.

When can you say a new era has begun? According to Michiel Schwarz and Joost Elffers – both Dutch, working in the United States – it’s when you can give it a name. And here it is, then: Sustainism, the single word representing the global trend that will eventually save the world.

In the words of its authors, Sustainism is the new Modernism is "A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era". Full of inspiring aphorisms and rich in colorful logos, the book definitely has the enthusiasm of a manifesto. Its contemporary mantras and hopeful predictions about the times to come make it a very optimistic one, too, albeit often redundant. But again, we’re talking about a manifesto.

As many of you might have guessed, the word “sustainist” echoes the need for sustainability we have so much heard about in the last years, mostly in association with architecture and design. Joost and Schwarz, though, take a step further and extend the meaning to other global phenomena, not necessarily inherent to familiar concepts like “green” and “recycling”. If the Sustainist world will be obviously reliant on recycled materials and clean energy, it will also be a media-savvy, iper-connected world.

Networking and new media are an important part of the Sustainist credo, with social media weaving a real-time global network coordinating the movement. To Elffers and Schwarz, recycling and the Internet are all part of the same open and participatory philosophy, a sort of “good wave” departing from many of the principles of Modernism – but not in total opposition with it.

In line with its conceptual approach, the book is very visual. Its colorful pages feature lots of logos, mostly revolving around the trefoil knot on the cover, and all released under a Creative Commons license, further proof of its sympathy for the Free Culture movement.

Sustainism also provides plenty of slogans, often Modernist ones tweaked into becoming something else. From “Less is more” to “Do More with Less”, from “nature as resource” to “nature as a source”. And so on: from planning to co-design, from uniformity to diversity, from appropriation to open-source exchange. The authors want to make it clear that we’re living a breakthrough, a reclamation of context in spite of Modern universalism – and yet far from the often cynical multiformity of Postmodernism. Apart from those -isms, though, Sustainism seems to be a general solutions to problems that are not clearly or critically explored.

In delivering a broad definition of all things good today, Sustainism is a successful project. The logos are also nice, and they might find practical use from now on. As a manifesto, there is nothing else we can ask for, right? Right.

At the same time, though, going through the whole thing leaves you a bit confused. It is true that the authors might be able to inject a concept into the collective conscience, but the book itself doesn’t develop any of the slogans in actual case studies. There are no examples for the unexperienced reader – who maybe doesn’t know too much about LEED certificates, open-source software, sustainability, and participatory design – nor for the professional – who, instead, might know those things very well and find the product repetitive and unnecessary. On one hand, Elffers and Schwarz claim context is emerging as a key factor in design, but they don’t really contextualize it. The examples would have been too many to name, maybe, but an attempt wouldn’t have hurt.

While reading (and watching, as in 240 pages there is not that much to read), you have the feeling that yet another example of branding is at work. The authors are not trying to sell you the ideas, which are already out there, but – much more simply – their book. Was it necessary to print such a thick publication (I’m not sure the paper is recycled, but still) when the same concepts were already out there in the very Internet the authors praise? Let’s move on.

Sustainism‘s vagueness is perfect to make the concept successful – I can imagine it becoming a very popular term – but its non-specificity will hardly allow it to inspire true programmatic evolutions. If you include too many things inside a definition, some will clash with each other. To make an example, the “everybody connect!” stereotype can be used to cut slacks to media corporations like Google, who burn lots of energy to maintain their army of servers – not a very Sustainist idea, or is it?

We’ve seen how another loosely-constructed conceptual brand, Richard Florida’s Creative Class, has been harshly and diffusely criticized for its vague and imprecise definitions, bending reality to support a principle – namely, “culture makes cities rich”. While fostering culture, city administrations following Florida’s credo have often suffocated the grassroots street-level creativity that made cities appealing in the first place, giving way to a globalized formats with different results depending on context. That is to say, you can come up with a principle and name a global trend, but you can’t just slam a label on things and expect them to follow the same evolution.

Sustainism aggregates a loose stereotype of what a forward-thinking, network-oriented mentality is, based on a series of phenomena happening all over the world. But those phenomena have names too, and so have the people and the initiatives that paved their way through their actions. Instead of mapping the virtuous cases, or at least defining a more fine-grained vocabulary of practices, popularizing the ideas through a simplified and ambiguous banner could blur the differences so much exalted in the book. Sustainism will hardly prove as controversial as Florida’s Creative Class – even though the authors mention an even broader category, the “cultural creatives” – but I’m afraid it will at best turn out to be pretty useless. Here’s another -ism for Schwarz and Elffers: truism.

In one of the last scenes of Werner Herzog‘s Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) an Aborigine stands up in a court room to speak up against some mineral excavations happening in a sacred tribal ground. The judge asks for a translation, but nobody can provide it. The man is called “the Mute”, being the last living member of his village and the only one in the world left speaking his native language.
This saddening scenario may not just be a relevant piece of cinema, but a likely future for many of today’s less technology-savvy linguistic minorities.
Although there are diverging opinions about it, there are from 4,000 to 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world, but on the internet English reigns as an unquestioned king (enlightened, yet patronizing), since the first bit was transmitted back in the ’60s. Nevertheless, despite it being the globalization’s lingua franca, more languages and some interesting linguistic phenomena have been emerging on the net in the past years, drawing the attention of linguists and media scholars.
The Multilingual Internet, published by Oxford University Press and edited by Brenda Danet and Susan C. Herring, is a very interesting and significative attempt at making sense of such phenomena, in both their novelty and urgency.
From the Romanization of Arabic or Mandarine characters to the compelling use of Greeklish and kaomoji in e-mail correspondence and virtual communities, many are the deterritorializations and reterritorializations of traditional languages on hybrid internet lingos, giving way to mixed interpretations.
A relevant example is Greeklish, the use of Roman characters instead of Greek ones, sometimes mixed with numbers to better resemble the original. In contemporary Greece this form of computer-mediated communication – stygmatized by the Orthodox clergy and by the conservatives – has become a controversial issue, carrying its share of political frustration and heralding the compulsory uniformity of globalization. On the other hand, it also shows a need for the Greek to express themselves in their own language, while using an English-centered medium like the internet.
Some of the most interesting chapters of the book deal with young Arab internet users – in particular from Egypt and the Emirates – and their use of ASCII-ized Arabic, an hybrid form of Romanization also including numerical characters reproducing similar Arab letters. Apparently this form of typing has favored vernacular and local dialects, normally limited to oral use, extending informal and country-specific talk to the written dimension of online chat. This might keep young Arab speakers safe from the linguistic uniformity occurring elsewhere in the cyberspace.
The Multilingual Internet has an essentially empirical linguistic approach (which is what makes the book at once solid and hard on the linguistically-unprepared reader), documenting certain case studies and only rarely focusing on critical attempts to solve emerging social issues. Among the ecceptions is a chapter dedicated to a study on an automated translation software programmed for keeping web-savvy Catalans from using too much Spanish in their e-mails. The authors of the essay point out several flaws in today’s internet translation softwares, drawing our attention on a bigger and crucial problem: interface.
If computer-mediated communication has forced so many people into adapting to certain typing standards, switching codes and learning English, it is mostly due to the geographical genesis of those interfaces. Control of technology, protocols and platform design are all deeply connected to the hegemonic role North America and Europe play in globalization. But if the internet has also proven a challenging and creative tool for new generations all over the world to explore and enjoy their own languages on multiple levels, to prevent the common standards from taking over the less represented linguistic minorities it is necessary to act on those interfaces, to change the rules of the game instead of taking action on the players.
Just like in the Herzog movie institutional law and estate regulations were able to sell the Mute’s holy ground without asking him, so a pre-existing technological hegemony is undermining the possibility of a linguistically heterogeneous internet by playing on a different level, flying way higher than the users’ heads.
Changes need to be made at the top, in the very interface, even though it’s quite unlikely to see any. As for now, like the Green Ants do at the end of the Herzog movie, let us all just adapt and pray in the supermarket.

(All photos © Alex MacLean)

Photographer Alex MacLean has been flying around the United States in his plane for a while now, taking aerial pictures that little have in common with the cold-hearted omniscence of Google Earth. Instead, they provide a beautiful, poetic, and yet compelling view of the ecological risks of suburban sprawl, uncontrolled industrialism, and the scarcity of environment-friendly energy sources. MacLean’s eye selects visually-amazing targets, to which he also attaches a rich statistical documentation to better outline a risky scenario: toxic waste, pollution, global warming, but also housing speculation and social isolation.

The tipically American dream of a suburban home, a two-car garage and a front lawn to be mown on weekends has been a paradygm of social fulfilment since the 1950s, when the society of consumerism was just beginning to emerge as a dream come true. Books like Revolutionary Road (recently adapted into a movie by American Beauty‘s englishman Sam Mendes) and the critically appreciated TV series Mad Men have portrayed the human backdrop of the major changes that were starting to affect society, little spycho-cracks opening in the smooth surface of the pastel colored ads that best embody the spirit of that decade. But, just as advertising has seduced the whole western world into buying products and absorbing cultural references, the subsequential booming urbanization has also schooled generations of businessmen and governments, also leading emerging economies to follow the build-and-consume formula.

Dubai’s real estate speculation and China’s incredibly fast urbanization are some of the most blatant examples, while Mexico still is the American dream’s closest victim. But the Las Vegas-inspired emirate is recently suffering a rent drop (just like its western brother has been hardly hit by the crisis) and, despite the sky-rocketing urbanization rate in Far Eastern countries, only an infinitesimal minority can afford to live in the Southern California-style “Offworlds” that urban theorist Mike Davis mentions in his Planet of Slums

.

MacLean’s look, despite its elevated point of view, digs deep into the ground-level contraddictions of the American lifestyle: self-segregated suburban communities revolving around cul-de-sacs, infrastructures making multiple cars a mandatory need for families, environmentally hazardous seaside condos, expensive golf fields or swimming pools forced into the desert, and so on.

But the photographer also points out the good things: green roof gardens in Chicago; the SEGS in Dagget, CA, the biggest solar energy complex in the world; the Del Rio, TX dam, providing energy for 15,000 families; the Tehachapi, CA wind turbines, a growing electricity source.

MacLean’s book carries a strong and timely message, right when the housing crisis is turning “McMansion” conglomerates into neo-slums and cities like Flint, Michigan are even thinking about shrinking for a change. The suburban dream turned out to be not so good, and a growing need for human-scale urban space is spreading across the US and the world, both for the people and the environment’s sake. Some people see “slumchitecture” as a virtuous example, but definitely a little more local, context-savvy attention to urban space by planners, architects and city officials would be the best start. In the meantime, Alex MacLean’s pictures are a beautiful chance to help our awareness.