May 4, 2022
The relationship between art and the institution has become increasingly fraught.
Age old institutions are being questioned in a way not previously seen and with good reason;
Elitism is long gone out of style and the art institution, perhaps the ultimate symbol of such exclusivity, hasn’t made a decision as to what it wishes to be.
The exclusive nature of culture, is what allows preservation. Nonetheless, preservation and diversity are much like oil and water.
So the big question for the art institution now, is how to know what to preserve and what to let go of, so that the future does not change the past, but the past does not drag the future.
For generations to come.
The institution represents the generation in which it lives.
But in the current climate, even more so than the institution being interrogated, is the more urgent call to action of “How to assure there will be generations to come?”
The End of the World looms over us all.
It is in every single news bulletin. Little fires everywhere. Threatening to become a planet burning.
The end followed by no new beginning.
This is where art meets the spirit of the age, and the institution struggles to adapt.
Now comes a break from everything that came before. Not a renaissance.
A revolution.
Not on a national or even continental level- no, far bigger.
The sort that changes human anatomy, psychology and the face of the planet.
Again.
We’ve done the agricultural, the industrial, the digital.
The next has much to live up to, and very few constraints. A deeply worrying fact.
Especially when seen beside the next, the only thing to unite us all, forever-
Decay. It must always be that way.
Institution and the culture it protects fades to nothing, if everything burns.
And the fire is already lighted. Artists can no longer aim for legacy.
As legacies live in futures
That don’t exist after 12 on The Clock.