#altermodernity

I've accumulated a whole series of open tabs on my browser, I know they are interesting and worth a mention but I was also struggling to find a link between them.

The first post was from Make Magazine called "Altered Thrift Store art" and lists a series of art works that have been copied, altered - 'improved'. Inevitably it mentions Banksy more than a couple of times and while that is no problem itself it does restrict the viewpoint on this form of art to one particular artist. An indicator of his (or her) success no doubt but it is worth considering the whole series of work all the way back to the situationists who have been hacking culture for around 50 years.

Robert Montgomery is doing something more clearly situationist around London with his billboard hacking - FunStuffCafe have a gallery and so does Stupid Dope. Very text heavy (as poetry tends to be) in a format that tends towards the lowest common denominator and generally discourages rather than provoking thought.

Wikipedia provides a rather interesting position to all of this with the entry for The Absurd - a substantial philosophy with a definite history that pre-dates the Internet but is still markedly appropriate (an increasing important test for the robustness of any body of intellectual work). Rather coincidentally Adbusters has printed an article about the Birth of Altermodern - not necessarily a complete thesis that picks up all of these threads but a start. 

We are entering a new era of humanity where postmodernity is slipping into altermodernity, we find that the binaries we rejected are not only blurring but finally collapsing. Unable to say with any certainty what is real or virtual, human or animal, organic or genetically modified, some wish to resuscitate again, but this time with nostalgia, the failed antimodern project of shattering distinctions. While the chorus – composed now of cyberpunks and activists joined by capitalists and technocrats – rejoices in the indistinguishable difference between online and offline, organic and synthetic, man and machine, the most crucial distinction of all – that between resistance and complicity – is collapsing as well. Unless we can discover a way to critique the system without furthering the system, we shall be lost.