Published in: Heritage Space Hanoi and University of the Arts Bremen (eds.), Alternative Mobility, Hanoi 2024, pp. 173-191.
“Halle” and “Hanoi”. The two places are flickering across a programmed black-and-white LED-screen as part of the work Self Portrait by Sung Tieu. They are listed among various cities where the artist has been living until the moment of the work`s production in 2015. The installation`s photographic documentation did not just catch my attention with the alliterating coherence between two places that share the same beginnings, it referred to my own biographical movements, too. Halle is the name of a city where I was born and grew up in East Germany until 1998, and I was invited to Hanoi in 2023, as writer and curator in the field called contemporary art. At first, this seems like a pretty random coincidence – one of these things that make you wonder for a moment before you forget about them quickly.
Somehow, this coincidence kept lingering in my mind several days before my departure to Hanoi. Not just my biographical ties seemed to be linked to the two cities mentioned in Tieu`s work all the sudden, but also a movement and temporality indicated by the list of cities on display. “Halle” made me think of my own experience of being placed at another temporality when the East joined its West-German counterpart in 1990 – an experience that might have been shared by many contract workers from Vietnam in my hometown at the time. Hanoi, where I arrived just before I started writing this text, was often mentioned in conversations with artists friends like Quynh Dong back in Zurich. As a place where she has been travelling to frequently – for producing a new work or to get in touch again with biographical temporalities that relate to a not-so-distant past. It seems as if different temporalities are at play in decisions taken at a certain moment – like the ones to move from one place to another. Often, the question comes to mind: Are we contemporary? Or: are we always either too early or too late, while at same time trying to catch up with something that is considered to be contemporary? However, temporalities do often seem to play a decisive part in personal and professional life but are rarely explicitly addressed. Rather, they are taken for granted in many situations.
Apart from twisted personal experiences with the topic, it was such an observation that also caught my professional attention a few years ago. Thus, I started to focus on practices and theories of contemporary art that have been inspired by various encounters with temporalities, and the omnipresent contemporary in particular. Apparently, it is mentioned by almost everyone in the field where I write, teach, and organize events to frame their work, but rarely something that is brought up as question. Throughout the following paragraphs I would first like to shed some light on connections between mobility and the contemporary as concepts, take a second step by thinking about the distribution of the contemporary in the field of art, and finally will have a look on how the circulation of the term, but also criticism and technology might have changed the notion of the contemporary itself.
The contemporary: a circulating concept and condition
To be mobile is often articulated as imperative for people, commodities, and infrastructure today. We carry mobile phones, work from different places, and buy things that have travelled a long way. To be mobile does not just indicate a movement, it also implies technological structures, like for transportation or shipping. At first, it sounds very much like an open field of opportunities, a promise of connecting and development. And apart from a significant contribution to climate change, it`s a great opportunity to take a plane from Frankfurt to Hanoi; being moved to a place thousands of miles away within an 11-hour flight. Honestly, I always liked flying as a particular abstract form of mobility, to be moved without any tangible ties to temporality and location. Of course, I have been looking forward to meeting my fellow participants of the Month of Art Practice Program in person, getting involved in lectures and conversations at a joint table, sharing the experience of a city where I have never been before. A few hours after my arrival in Hanoi, I decided to take a long walk through the streets, with and against the speed or direction of motorbikes, cars, buses, as well as some bicycles and pedestrians. And I have been trying to anticipate the mobility of others on their ways to work, as means of transportation for others, or – like me – to meet certain people and places at an agreed time. It took some days to connect to the different time-zone as well as to the movements of other inhabitants of the city. Finally, it was not just my mobility that was needed to take part in this exchange program, but also a challenge to find a rather immobile situation to concentrate on writing this text. While there is a desire to be mobile in search for experience, encounter, and inspiration, the process of writing itself seems to demand a rather immobile situation.
Sitting in front of my mobile computer, eyes and fingers are constantly searching to connect to the device. Inside the room of my temporary accommodation, my body keeps a certain posture for the time writing, while I feel quite detached from the mobility of others in the city. Windows closed, a sonorous sound from the air conditioning seems to level down all engines, buzzers, dogs, or voices, coming from the outside. And yet, I am here because I have extensively been using material infrastructures to travel, but also immaterial networks of communication to get in touch with the organizers before. It seems that both certain infrastructures of mobility and periods of immobility are required to produce my text for Hanoi. And it`s not only a great opportunity to be located somewhere else for some time, but also a privilege and demand in my field of work. A privilege because my participation is funded by a cultural organization in Switzerland, where I happen to be based for more than 20 years now. A demand because mobility almost appears to be a prerequisite of reputation in the field of contemporary art and culture. The locations where protagonists “live and work”, where exhibitions, openings and lectures are organized, usually contribute to the notion of how someone`s work is perceived. Many places mentioned by a CV might suggest that one work is more contemporary than another one with fewer attributes of mobility. Extensive residency, travel and exchange programs funded by cultural and often state-connected organizations, seek to stimulate the circulation of work and workers. If we are encouraged to be mobile, might that also aim at getting closer to the contemporary? It depends on how one would understand the notion of the term. Does it point towards something that is established in relation between people and places? Or: does it address an attribute to a place, work, or person? I`ll come back to that question a bit later. Let me first follow my thoughts about the relation between mobility and the contemporary a bit further.
Interestingly, some places – and metropolises in particular – have been more associated with the notion of the contemporary than others. Namely in the field of contemporary art, cities with many respective institutions, audiences, and events are obviously closely tied to it, while places without such framing are imagined to be further away from the contemporary. Tieus` autobiographical work Self-Portrait, for instance, does not just list “Berlin”, the place where she has primarily been working and living at the time of its production. Many other places that might not have been associated broadly with an institutional context of contemporary art – like “Halle” and “Hanoi” – are mentioned as well. The presence of such cities in a prominent contemporary art gallery in Berlin where Tieu`s solo show was installed in 2015, does not just point to the artist`s biographical ties. It also highlights the diverse roles of different places in relation to the contemporary, displaying their names framed by a simple display device against standard white cube gallery walls. Although I have not seen the Berlin show in person back then and just stumbled across its photographic documentation recently, it did instantly recall experiences from my side. Such as in 1990, when the country and political ideology where I grew up ceased to exist. Or the time when I stepped into my roles as a critic and writer in the field of contemporary art in the early 2000s. To think about where the contemporary could be located in relation to artistic practices, theory, and everyday experience, had become a guiding question for years in my own practice. As a critic I would often ask: What are the key elements that make a work particularly contemporary? Or, even more critical: Could a work of art considered to be contemporary at all? But from time to time, I felt a hesitation. And maybe also a desire to step out of this permanent demand for the contemporary.
Two ways of conceptualizing the contemporary in the field of art
What then, could be considered as the contemporary of contemporary art? At least, two major ways might respond to this question before the background of what I`ve outlined so far. First and foremost, there seems to be a certain standard concept of features and formats at many places all over the world, if something is labelled contemporary art. In addition to that, there is a claim that respective practices should prove relevant of what happens now. Both readings come with problems and have been controversially discussed. Let me draft the two lines of arguments briefly, before I will turn to a discussion of possible further developments or alternatives.
The contemporary in the first sense is distributed by formats like white cube exhibition spaces and biennials, or conceptually in press releases and critical writing. These features seem to figure as some kind of standard, largely based on the ambiguous heritage of modernist claims for autonomy on the one hand and its dependency on conceptual reason on the other hand[1]. While the purist vision of an all-white space has been proliferating in built environments for exhibiting and living throughout the 20th century[2], a need for discourses elaborating its conceptual basis has grown as well[3]. Respective standards are still as widely accepted as they have been targeted by criticism recently – such as pertaining the cultural dominance of a “Former West”[4]. In response to these questionable but persisting conditions, Peter Osborne has coined the expression “post-conceptual”[5]. That ties in with the conceptual break in recent art history, that every matter and medium can be considered art and that apart from this, no general definition of art exists. On the one hand, standard exhibition formats like the white cube as well as references to movements of conceptual art both connect to specific moments of 20th century art history. But on the other hand, the so-called contemporary art has established a continuing presence after the breakdown of modern narratives[6]. Following this concept, the contemporary could be understood as continuing present that has been distributed globally towards the end of the 20th century. From this moment, modern and postmodern art are considered to be historical categories, while their narrative threads can still be found across the discursive field. And maybe the condition of the continuing contemporary itself connects back to the notion of supposed timelessness in modernity – a permanent condition that has been attached to modernist movements retrospectively throughout the 1990s[7].
In a second reading, contemporary art proves its relevance to what happens now, in order to share a moment in time under certain social conditions. Thus, respective works of art suggest being in tune with a certain experience of reality. Sometimes, you`d find them accompanied by the cultural politics of realism, suggesting art`s ultimate equivalence with such an experience[8]. While one might encounter an intuitive understanding of the now in many cases, the reality connected to it seems debatable. This applies even more for normative statements of realism, where art should not just relate, but bear direct links to a supposed reality. After all, art`s close connection with what one refers to as the “now”, could raise controversial questions. What is actually considered to be one moment in time? And who shares what there? Furthermore, to be synchronized with the now appears not just as an option, but as demand in the field of contemporary art. Although this call for the now might not always go hand in hand with modernization anymore[9], the demand still resembles modern ideas of keeping up with some kind of progress. How one is supposed to connect to a suggested present, continues to be a multifaceted socio-political issue. Parallel to widespread criticism on continuing modern standards dominated by a Former West, the question how to approach the now might develop from an imperative to an open question. Before the background of modernities and modernisms in plural, a broader notion of the contemporary seems to emerge. Nevertheless, some standard conditions are still shared across the globe.
If one connects art`s claimed relevance in the present to the historical narrative of continuing contemporaneity, does contemporary art just continue to be relevant? What today`s conditions do obviously share with past decades, is the proliferation of a globalized market economy, often called globalization. From the early 2000s onwards, this development has been even more integrated by real time-networks of internet communication. Through chains of production and distribution, but also by cloud servers and online platforms, we seem to share one condition. A condition that may develop quickly but is not imagined as historical line of progress anymore. In opposition to the commonplace criticism of globalization, that everything supposed to be standardized to the same formats and looks, more and more diverse forms of the “contemporary” are being exhibited, published, and discussed recently. And a plurality of places, histories and routes is included in contemporary art contexts right now, while many of them might not meet distributed standards according to the first reading mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Has the condition of the contemporary become outdated itself, then? It still seems to be distributed as some cultural standard token in a largely synchronized world. For many, it appears like the hallmark of globalism[10] – the all too positive praise of opportunities in globalization –, for others, “contemporary” may sound like a recurring humanist universalism[11]. Especially, the first perspective on the distribution of standard formats in contemporary art has raised concerns like this. Not just the omnipresent white cube in exhibition spaces, but also the persistence of certain categories how art is communicated, contributes to such observations. Criticism has been predominantly targeting the normative demand following certain standards: either to be contemporary or not to be part of a present cultural economy at all. Introducing such a temporal divide that defines some places, activities, and contexts as contemporary ones, while others are excluded from this cultural concept of a shared present[12], points to the double standard of humanism. And it also recalls my own experience with temporal politics of belatedness in 1990, where I supposed to be too late for the historical clock of the West and was expected to catch up[13]. According to this logic, it would be only hegemonic powers where humanism is already in place, whereas other regions could just live up to this standard by further development, which all-too-often meant colonization and exploitation. Even today, one could still find arguments of this sort, where city marketing and estate companies draft roads of development with the help of contemporary art events, for instance.
Transformation of the contemporary: current art and exhibition practices
I know that this sounds all very much compromised. After all, particularly the second reading of the contemporary may bear some hope. As more and more alternative paths have been drafted by recent contributions from outside a globalized standard in major institutions like biennials and especially the documenta15 in 2022, there is not just criticism on its previous norms but also a fundamental discussion what the contemporary could mean today. Perhaps the second claim that art should connect to what happens now, contributes less to establishing standards, but helps to create spaces for a variety of individual temporal approaches. Art practices in Kassel, Tashkent, Jakarta, or Hanoi might not just relate in very different ways to the specific experiences of the very now, but also come with different understandings of what that now actually refers to. And obviously, there is no standard definition in response to that question – especially when thinking of non-linear concepts, or the presence of different temporalities that one encounters in the very now.
My research interest has been drawn to transcultural relations in art practices throughout the past years, with a special focus on connections between East Asia and Europe. Works by Zheng/Mahler, a Hongkong based artist duo, triggered my interest in the topic from an early stage of my explorations. By following the routes of one of their works from 2020, Mountains of Gold and Silver are not as good as Mountains of Green and Blue, I would like to take a closer on different temporalities in current art practices. The installation is staged as some kind of strange play between the physical presence of undecorated porcelain jars and diverse objects generated by holographic fans. Sometimes, you`ll find yourself among a conversation between the jars, sometimes the voices from the jars will be singing. The text for the play has been inspired by research on alternatives to a current economy of resource exploitation towards one of care. It is part of a trilogy of works that has been following the routes and temporalities of trading pearls, porcelain, watches and rare earths between China, Africa, and Europe since 2013.
Since the installation was part of the group show Next Act: Contemporary art from Hong Kong in 2020, of course there shouldn`t be any doubt about its contemporaneity. And in terms of technology and topic, the work seems highly relevant at the places where it refers to. On the other hand, the grotesque play involves several temporalities at once: take diverse geological ages reappearing in contemporary high-tech apparatuses for instance, or current trade disputes between China and Europe that resemble imageries of past centuries. Furthermore, the jars talk about a contaminated present, alternative futures, and about spirits transgressing temporalities. It`s not just a play with imageries, trade routes and material, but also with the presence of diverse temporalities in the now. First of all, the work`s title and scripted conversations refer – albeit in a negative sense – almost literally to China`s official policy aiming at a balance between economic development and ecological sustainment. Published extensively in official PRC sources throughout the past years, it is mentioned now as the “two mountain theory”; stating that actual “mountains of green and blue” are assets in the economic development towards the metaphorical “mountains of gold and silver[14]. Zheng/Mahler refer to the government policy indirectly, insofar as they are quoting local protest slogans by villagers against a polluting extraction of rare earths in Jiangxi. Reminding local authorities of their promises connected to the official “two mountain theory”, it could be read as outcry against a devastating present and demand for an alternative future. At the same time, the installation`s staged conversations between vases and fuel cell, solar panel or battery holograms, links Jiangxi`s past and present to aspired futures elsewhere. Components for digital and so-called “green technology” production chains in Europe and the US do largely depend on the use of rare earths from China[15]. A few moments after some AI-generated voices of the installation have been telling how unearthed “spirits” are contaminating air and water resources when they are mined, the hologram of an MRI skeleton scan links high tech to the deep time of geological formations: “The mountains will always be there.” Obviously, “always” does indicate a temporality far beyond human imagination. And in the following sentence, the voice announces a turn of agency. It will be not humans acting on mountains but the other way around: mountains that “will take care of you.” Timewise, the material basis of Zheng/Mahler`s installation could be located somewhere between the vases as China`s standard export good for the European market from the 17th to the 19th century and the holographic fans as signature high tech product in 2020. Other temporalities indicated by the AI-generated dialogues seem rather undefined – in terms of the deep time of geology, or some future time where mountains “will take care of you”. Furthermore, the recursive character of AI technologies itself does always point to some source of data in the recent past, even when it speaks about a future.
As much as certain forms and concepts still circulate as normative standards in the field of contemporary art, the post-conceptual inheritance of the field – i.e., its general openness to take any form and matter –, may prove a specific relevance for the diverse temporal approaches in current art practices. And vice versa, the plurality of temporal layers and understandings in these practices has certainly contributed to broaden the notion of the contemporary itself. Against widespread criticism targeting globalized standards, it could be the very global mobility of the term and its conceptional basis itself that might have enabled these recent developments. Furthermore, many artists use an emerging openness in terms of the contemporary not to synchronize with the flow of globalism, but to unfold a kind of asynchronicity and untemporality. Has the contemporary become outdated itself yet? I suppose we can agree on that so far it has not. Nevertheless, the term undergoes major transformations in transcultural circulation on the one hand as in encounters with omnipresent AI applications on the other hand. As the recursive logic of the latter – like the generated texts for Zheng/Mahler`s installation – does only operate on the basis of already existing material, one could conclude that this technology could never produce an actual contemporary presence, but only anticipations of the previous. Ultimately, there is no now in AI. Given the ubiquity of respective technologies – from managing everyday situations to enabling art projects – there is certainly a potential of rendering the contemporary much less important in art’s relations to what happens now.
Acknowledgements and References:
I would like to thank Heritage Space and the Month of Art Practice team of 2023 for the kind invitation to take part in this project and Pro Helvetia for their generous support of my contribution. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Shared Campus network, where I developed my thinking on the contemporary in conversations and workshops in collaboration with the University of Arts Zurich, the University of Arts London, LASALLE College of Arts Singapore, Tokyo University of the Arts, and the Hongkong City University.
[1] I am referring to the double bind of autonomy and conceptual reason here insofar, as various modernist movements emphasized a certain distance between art and life at the beginning of the 20th century, while at the same time searching to conceptualize an “internal” systematics of art. One might think of Wassily Kandinsky as paradigmatic for such a position. Cf. Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular, 1912. Reprint. New York: G. Wittenborn, 1964.
[2] Klonk, Charlotte. Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000. New Haven (Conn.): Yale University Press, 2009
[3] Joseph Kosuth is a quite far-reaching example in this respect, who developed a conceptual position up to the point where art becomes a branch of philosophy, i.e. first and foremost, a discourse. Kosuth, Joseph. Art after Philosophy. In: Studio International, Vol. 178, No. 915, October 1969, pp. 134-37.
[4] “Former West” points to the former Cold War hegemony of a Euro-North American “West” against the “Eastern Bloc”, between World War II and the dissolution of the Soviet Union as well most of its socialist allies around 1990. Through the rise of other regions to power (China in particular), an increased globalization and digital connectedness, but also criticism on its persistent colonial structures, the West has rather become a historical figure – one that is still around, but certainly lost its hegemonic cultural place. See: Sheikh, Simon, and Maria Hlavajova. Former West: Art and the Contemporary after 1989. Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2016.
[5] Osborne, Peter. The Postconceptual Condition: Critical Essays. New York: Verso, 2018
[6] Danto, Arthur Coleman. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.
[7] For example, many of the so-called “modern classics” in design were re-issued in the late 1980s and 1990s. Respective pieces of furniture started to get popular in blockbuster movies, TV- talk shows and advertisement. See: Breuer, Gerda. Die Erfindung des Modernen Klassikers: Avantgarde und ewige Aktualität. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2001.
In parallel, a generation of artists in the 1990s and 2000s started to explore a multitude of modernities critically. See: Breitwieser, Sabine. Modernologies: Contemporary Artists Researching Modernity and Modernism. Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2009.
[8] The claim of art as realism in relation to certain socio-economic conditions has developed throughout modernisms of the early 20th century, too – as a contradictory counterpart to the claim of autonomy. Throughout the 1990s/2000s turn in contemporary art to an archeology of modernisms, claims for autonomy and realism seemed to run almost parallel in many cases.
[9] Arthur Rimbauds imperative “One must be absolutely modern!”, written at the beginning of the 20th century, could be also read as the nightmare of modernization – there is no escape from its rhythms. Rimbaud, Arthur, transl. by Louise Varése. A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat. New York: New Directions, 1961, pp. 88-89.
[10] Jones, Caroline A. 2010. Globalism/Globalization. In: Art and Globalization. Edited by James Elkins, Zhivka Valiavicharska, and Alice Kim, University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 129–37.
[11] David Joselit has discussed the contemporary in terms of a “policing instrument”, comparable to the argument of colonialism bringing civilization to “underdeveloped” – and thus, belated – regions. “The West not only built but policed its art worlds by inventing a theory and criticism that explicitly devalued aesthetic practices beyond the framework of European fine arts, and by limiting access to education and exhibition infrastructures to their subaltern subjects during the colonial era. In short, through its consistent if viable emphasis on diverse forms of innovation, Western modernism devalues heritage as a living resource–both its own and that of other regions of the world–in order to appropriate for itself the force of innovation–of modernity and contemporaneity.” Joselit, David. 2020. Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization. Cambridge MA/London: The MIT Press, p. 224.
[12] Cf. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.
[13] Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes have conceptualized this experience of “belatnedness” and “catching up” recently: Krastev, Ivan, Stephen Holmes, and Stephen Holmes. The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy. New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2019.
[14] Official PRC media sources have attributed the “two mountain theory” to Xi Jinping recently (http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-01/10/c_139654760.htm, accessed 16 November 2023), whereas critical media research has noted that the topic and almost the exact wording did already circulate among PRC officials in the late 1990s (https://chinamediaproject.org/the_ccp_dictionary/green-waters-and-green-mountains/, accessed 16 November 2023).
[15] Between 2010 and 2014, this dependency of high- and green tech companies from the Europe and the US on China`s rare earth export grew into a trade dispute and WTO court case. Whereas China claimed to limit exploitation and exports for the reason of sustainable development in its mining regions, the US and European countries suggested that this policy would in fact aim at just increasing prizes for exported raw materials to make foreign products more expensive. China lost the WTO case in 2014. However, many illegal or small-scale mines with hardly any wastewater cleaning (one of the main sources of environmental pollution) were closed due to causing severe health problems in the region of Jiangxi (https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining, accessed 16 November 2023).