Who Is The Altermodern?

I talked to my course convener today about the Altermodern exhibition and my essay.

My first issue was this: who is the subject of the Altermodern? In all the literature I've read on it, there is a rather conspicuous lack of a subject. There is talk of a globalised world, of "journey-forms" and of "history as the last territory to be explored", but in none of this is the specific subject.

Feminist theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory; all have taught us that the subject is not fixed. The "he" as the sign of a human can no longer be excused, and "we" is far too vague to let slip quietly by. Why he? Who is she? Where is she? Who do I mean when I say we? Who am including, who am I excluding? These are questions that need to accompany every theoretical endeavour.

The Altermodern is no different. So in the ideas that Bourriaud and others present, we must ask: Who experiences the Altermodern? How do they experience it? What do they experience? What effects differing experiences? How are these differing experiences recorded? Are there attempts to homogenise them; in the context of the gallery, or the art world? If there are, what to they mean? Who controls the discourse? Why? How? There is always another question. "So what?" can always be asked.

My essay will begin to explore issues of exhibiting that will expand into my dissertation and my "gorgeous" PhD (as Jane decided it would be; she could "see it").

I will at some point, either for this essay or for the later work, look at receptions to the avant-garde exhibitions of Modernism - the 1910 and 1912 post-Impressionist shows and the 1912 Futurist shows and discuss contemporary commentary that not entirely unlike today dismissed it as "continental", or, even worse, "French". I will think about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf going to the post-Impressionist ball blacked up and half-naked, calling themselves "Gauguin women". Where does racism come in here? Are they sending up the white bourgeoisie who were stunned by the French artist's "primitivising" of "respectable" society, or were they buying into it? I will also be thinking of who saw these shows. Was it Suffragettes escaping from aggressive policemen or was it the white bourgeoisie who wanted to collect art? I will think about the space created by exhibitions, about the art continuing, as Bourriaud has noted, before and after, in front of and behind, the physicality of the gallery. Of course where there's space, there's questions about space. Who's in it? Why? How?

Always a Why? How?