globalization from "art after modernism"

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a fruitful t ension between freedom and restraint. The concept of the good is necessarily bound up with the conceptof observing a limit. Perhaps after a long phase of rebelliously throwing out everything, we are more able to recognize that what is most acutely missing now is a sense oflimits. Since immunity from the responsibility of traditionhas itself become a tradition, perhaps we can go forwardfrom the point we have reached by also going back, with anew knowledge of how form, structure, and authority sustain the spirit and enable us to live our lives with morevision; they are a necessary condition of our well-being.

It may well be that only a cultural critic who looks at thedynamics of the total situation can contain and express itscontradictions-rather than taking a stand on one side orthe other, or submitting to serve the ends of any particularideological group or stylistic tendency. The role of criticismtoday, as I see it, is to engage in a fundamental reconstruction of the basic premises of our whole culture; it can benothing less than challenging the oppressive assumptions ofour secular, technocratic Western mentality. It is not just amatter of seeing things differently, but of seeing differentthings. Ou r culture expects us to be manic-to overproduce,to overconsume, and to waste-but in all this, somethingvital is missing: the knowledge that life can be transformedby a sacramental experience. For this reason, the essaysassembled here invite the reader to step outside our currentoutlook, and its fixed investments in the soulless powerpolitics of cultural bureaucracy, in order to see it in perspective-to compare our world view with others, and to acquireinsights that defy cultural conditioning. Direct knowing isthe only thing that can break the cultural trance: deliberately and soberly changing one's mind about the nature oftruth and reality, and about what is really important.Like all ideas, the idea of modernism has had a lifespan.Its legacy requires that we look at art once again in termsof purpose rather than style-if ever we are to succeed intransforming personal vision into social responsibilityagain. Perhaps the real answer to the question of whetheror not modernism has failed can only be given, in the end,by changing the basic dimensions in which we measure notonly happiness and unhappiness in our society, bu t alsosuccess and failure.

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5 ' ~ Z / : CHAPTER NINE: Gc-t/,*GLOBALIZATIONArt and the Big Picture T;,L

. \, ' , { . . I ., tf .Conflicting opinions on the global economy are enoughto keep anybody awake at night. Is it progress or rape?Where some discern an electronic global village, others cansee only nightmarish global pillage. How is anyone tomake sense of so many contradictory interpretations?What the globalization phenomenon really ratifies is ashift in power from the nation state and its bureaucrats tomultinational corporations and their entrepreneurs. Thecritics of globalization labor to point ou t that this transnational global flow of wealth and resources is considerablyless sanguine than might first appear, since the flow movesprimarily in one direction-away from the poorer countries and into the high-consumption zones of the West. Itworks-if i t works-only at the expense of underdeveloped nations and through ruthless plundering of the environment . Globally, poverty and environmental destructiondeepen inexorably as corporate profi ts rise. The financierGeorge Soros has described globalized markets as "awrecking ball, knocking, over one country after another."And Indian economist Vandana Shiva puts her summaryview like this: "Corporate globalization is centered oncorporate profits. It globalizes greed and consumerism."For its champions and believers, however, the globalization phenomenon represents the victory of a universalconsumer society. People in the most remote parts ofBorneo or the Himalayas, and in the tundras of Siberia, canno w enjoy the "benefits of modernization." Via Hollywood movies and advertising images introduced through

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satellite Tv, people around the world learn to emulate theconsumer lifestyle as a culturally homogenizing ideal.Instead of participating in their own civic and communitylife, Eskimos, for ins tance, can spend their evenings watching "Will & Grace" and "The West Wing." Make no mistake:globalization is hot just an economic phenomenon; it hasprofound cultural ramifications as well. The rising tide ofAmerican popular culture is exporting its way of lifeeverywhere."Does globalization mean we all have to becomeAmericans?" a professor at Cairo University asked ThomasL. Friedman, a leading commentator on international politics for The New York Times, at one of his lectures. The question cuts righ t to the chase. Although Friedman professes acertain "rational exuberance" about free markets and venture capitalism, he recognizes that in a world knittedtogether by technology, markets, and telecommunications,it has become harder and harder for countries to go onresisting globalization. We are now suffering from cultural extinction as well as from species extinction-languagesand entire cultural traditions are being lost at an alarmingrate. "It's like losing vital DNA," Friedma n claims. Eversince the events of 9/11/2001, the globalization process,corporate dominance, and the whole ideology of modernityhave emerged as the nexus of a frightening world crisis.

In Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World AfterSeptember 11 , Friedman describes what he was doing whenthe terrorists struck the World Trade Center and thePentagon. He was in Jerusalem, having just finished interviewing Itamar Rabinovich, the president of Tel AvivUniversity. By the end of the day, he claims he realized thatsomething irrevocable ha d taken place, and that his twodaughters would not grow up in the same world that hedid. "History just took a right tu m into a blind alley," hewrote in his diary, 1/and something very dear has just beentaken away."As I watched those buildings collapse on my own television screen in Virginia, a decades-old quote by theEnglish writer Cyril Connelly rose up like dislodgedshrapnel from a distan t part of my brain: "I t is closing timein the gardens of the West." Stated broadly, the destructionof the World Trade Center arrived on that day as a deadlymessage to the world: not everyone everywhere wants to

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live under the image of Western modernity and its marketfundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalists in the MiddleEast do not want freedom, individualism, plurali sm, secularism, or consumer lifestyles. To them, Western modernityand its secular ways are a lethal force threatening the lossof their ow n culture and community.So what do the Big Picture-and new world develop

ments-have to do with redefining art? To me it suggeststhat we need to look at, and reflect upon, the ways inwhich institutional structures establish the shapes andforms of what we do. In this I would agree with whatDavid C. Korten writes in Globalizing Civil Society: "Tomove toward the creation of a world of just and sustainable societies, we must move beyond many twentiethcentury ideas and institutions not appropriate to our currenthistorical reality .... Ou r future depends on making asignificant and conscious course change." I believe thatKorten is right when he says that we have to find the willto take the step to greater moral and spiritual maturity-itis time to move beyond an economic model that is destroying communities, cultures, and natural systems everywhere. I t is time to rethink our allegiance to what Kortencalls " the suicide economy."

Weaving these elements together in the light of currentdevelopments has further expanded my earlier belief thatour culture needs to define and pursue an alternativecourse. This matter has been a frequent theme-even anobsession-in my writing. In The Reenchantment of Art, abook that followed Has Modernism Failed?, I wrote that"Transformation cannot happen from ever more manic production and consumption in the marketplace; it is more likelyto come from some new sense of service to the whole-froma new intensity in personal commitment." That book's corethesis articulated t h ~ need to approach art in ways thatfundamentally reconstruct the basic premises of our wholeculture. It examines the work of individual artists wh o havemade the choice, person by person, to change into a different pattern of thinking, aligned more with the essentialnature of process rather than with product.Since then, I have come to understand that major conceptual and transformational shifts cannot just be made atan individual level. Basic institutional forms must bereconstructed as well. In this and the following chapter, I

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want to speak, therefore, about institutional and organizational change, some of which is already taking place.One promising and influential figure in the art worldtoday wh o is actually changing assumptions is the historianand scholar from Nigeria, Okwui Enwezor. Enwezor wasartistic director of Documenta 11, an international exhibitionof contemporary art which opened in Kassel, Germany, onJune 8, 2002. Enwezor accepts that art's sphere of referenceis now global, and he has renegotiated a correspondingcuratorial approach-by emptying institutional structuresof their old Kantian conceptions and making a real leapout of the old canonical system. Documenta 11 was muchmore than an eclectic mix of international artists fromaround the globe, and it went way beyond the parametersof visual spectacle. Many works in the exhibitionaddressed ways in whic h global capitalism is at the root ofmuch of the world's anguish-but it was Enwezor's ownagenda that was the driving and transformative forcebehind the show. At the ideological level, Enwezor notonly pesters "the unyielding theology" of artistic autonomy,canons, and connoisseurship-aspects of Western aesthetictradition and its paradigms for the organization of power.He also achieves a significant epistemological break with"the supposed purity and autonomy of the art object." Inthe process, he manages to redefine the relationship ofnon-Western cultures to the rest of the world.Many things about Enwezor's approach challenge theways in which art is traditionally curated-perhaps themost significant of all being his view of art as an openended, experimental, and discursive field, rather than aself-contained museological event. The catalogue itself-acolossus, weighing in at seven pounds and containing over600 pages-immediately gives the sense of art throwingitself ou t into the world and moving forward in a newdialectical relationship with the global culture at large.Enwezor's approach is shockingly strong. The first thirtypages of his catalogue consist of a disturbing spectacleof images-photographs from global news agencies thatconfront us with war and social chaos, poverty, disenfranchisement, and endless amounts of rubble on the ground,from New York to Ramallah-as a kind of visual vernacular for the mass unrest and fragmented politics that havebecome our world. (A photograph of Palestinian president

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Yasser Arafat donating blood in a Gaza hospital to aid victims of the terrorist attacks in the u.s. is one particularlytelling example.) This lexicon of images immediately setsus in present time, and acts as a useful starting point forputting us face-to-face with globalization and its damaging effects on the lives of the world's people. Enwezor isnot sh y about using art as an entry point for the biggestsocial, political, environmental, and ethical questions ofour time. He doesn't see art and politics as separate.Documenta 11 was in every way a benchmark event,encouraging people to open their minds to an unprecedented mix of ideas and influences from a dizzying varietyof sources.

In an effort to break down the institutional authorityattached to the site at Kassel, Enwezor orchestratedDocumenta 11 in multiple zones of activity. In order toopen up dialectical interaction with transnational audiences, he created five different thematic plat forms (publicconferences, film and video programs, workshops and lectures) that were staged i n five different cities: Vienna, NewDelhi, Berlin, St. Lucia, and Lagos. The intention was to"deterritorialize" artistic space and discourse and to globalize it. Western ar t history, in particular, and the academicand institutionalizing procedures connected with it, arewoefully inadequate to deal with the forces that today arereshaping the values and views of a global sphere-forceswhich now traverse continents and cities, locations anddiSciplines, practices and institutions. In seeking to builda "deterritorialized understanding of culture," with multidisciplinary directions that exist outside the institutionaldomains of Westernism; Enwezor's agenda goes farbeyond the parameters of the culture wars of the '80s and'90s, which sought to include the art ,of other cultures ashistorical supplementl? within a single, universal narrativeframe. That nar rative frame understands the forms of artby separating them from the world and linking them,instead, with each other. Given his post-imperial, postcolonial outlook, Enwezor prefers to view himself as acurator of cultures rather than of canons.Extending over a time frame of eighteen months, thesemultidisciplinary events, described by Enwezor as"research modules" or "interlocking constellations of discursive domains," allowed individuals from a variety of

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disciplines-philosophers, activists, theorists, historians,psychoanalysts, and writers-to exchange ideas and discuss critical methods and ways of thinking that migh t ultimately lead to a sense of global culture more like anemerging wave than a system of hierarchies. Enwezorunderstands that culture does not have a uniform effectonall societies that experience it. Developments in China,South Africa, India, and Nigeria frequently suggest practices, models, and experiments that , in terms of the gallerymuseum system, may seem hardly recognizable as art.Platform 4, for instance, entitled "Under Siege," studiedfour African cities-Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa,and Lagos-all of which have undergone state and economic collapse, partly due to programs instituted by theIMF an d Worfd Bank, which destroyed the localeconomies. Platform 5 was the exhibition itself at Kassel, agenuinely "worldcentric" compendium of over 160 artistsor artists' groups.One of Enwezor's co-curators, Sarat Maharaj, suggestsin his catalogue essay that, instead of treating differentcultures in a single frame, we make use of "xeno-equipment"-a term he invents for a new grammatical lingo thatwill elude the ready-made art categories and received classifications of "Kantian, 3D knowledge grids." Languagehas a dual character, as both a means of communicationand as a carrier of culture. Through disturbance and commotion at the level of language, one can achieve a changedsense of art itself. Xeno-equipment seeks to break throughthe rigor of disciplinary boundaries and methods, replacing them with an open-ended "unscriptedness." Maharajwrites, "the sky's the limit; anything can become the receptor-conductor of art practice." Documenta 11' s "para-epistemic probes to whip up see-think-feel weather fronts"were quite effective in opposing the academicizing, standardizing, and commodifying trends of our culture.

It must be said that Enwezor's contribution to artisticdiscourse is not without its fierce bite marks into the wholenotion of Westemism-defined as all those institutionsdevised and maintained solely to perpetuate capitalisman d the vision of secular democracy as a world system.The message is: no subservience. Resistance and liberationstruggles today are often centered in societies trying toprevent themselves from being incorporated into the

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Western world system, which is promulgated as the onlyviable form of social, political, an d cultural legitimacy. "I tseems quite clear," he points out in his catalogue essay,"that the West had completely underestimated the ferocityof fundamentalist Islam's hostility toward Western hegemony."For Enwezor, Ground Zero was a defining moment, a

ground-clearing gesture of tabula rasa, forcing Westernculture to redefine itself away from the dichotOmizing perspective of "the West and the rest." Enwezor castshis ownfertile spell over this dichotomy and leapfrogs right over it.We could, he suggests, use this moment to make a radicaldeparture from the system of hegemony that fuels thepresent struggle. We could even frame Ground Zero as theinstance of the full emergence of the margins to the center,the moment when frontiers between geographies and cultures became permeable.It is interesting to contrast Enwezor's response toGround Zero with that of another art-world figure, the artcritic Dave Hickey. Hickey is, of course, our most hyperenthusiast of postmodern artistic chinoiserie. At the time of

his much acclaimed exhibition, "Beau Monde" (held at SITESanta Fe in the spring of 2002), Hickey was interviewed inLas Vegas, where he teaches, by journalist Matt O'Brien,who asked him: "Has the definition or meaning of artchanged since September 11th?" To which Hickey replied:"To be honest, I have no idea. I f you want a commentaryon the terrorist attacks ask an actor, ask a folk singer.They're trained in cliche, and they're the ones doing all thecommentary. I'm sure it will make things very stupid for awhile. But I grew up in 'the '60s, so I'm used to peoplebeing blown up. My students are haVing nightmares, butit's just the same old shit to me . . . . I'm not in the prediction business. It certainly hasn't changed the meaning ofart. Art is what it is . . . . PeOple being murdered is not reallyan art issue." I deliberately place these comments herebecause their signature posture of recoil and neutralitystands in perfectly for the old modernist idea: art cares notif i t truly knows the world. It only wishes to make an interesting art object. In Hickey's case, he has always worn theposture well. But sometimes, when the timing is wrong,even flashy barroom humor can be stupid just when itneeds to be smart.

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If Okwui Enwezor has emerged on the scene as aprominent globalist, using the forces of globalization as ameans to shake off Western hegemony, Thomas Krens,ever since he became director of the Guggenheim Museumin the late 198Os, has proved himself to be a different kindof key player in the global sphere. The difference is thatwhereas Enwezor's approach is a leap out of the old system,Krens has capitulated and jumped straight onto the globalization bandwagon. Responding in part to the expansionisteconomy of the 1990s, Guggenheim Museum franchises arebeing exported around the world on an unprecedentedscale, with branches in Venice, Berlin, Bilbao, anotheralready under construction in Las Vegas, and one projectedfor Rio. "Global Guggenheim" has become a logo, likeNike, Gap, and Disney. It definitely is not seeking a valuesystem outside of the machinery of corporate commoditycapitalism. I f we are to believe Krens's logic, there is nolonger any alternative to the capitalist system-we aretrapped in it, so resistance is futile. Thus, instead of deploring the state of affairs, the smart move is to embrace itopportunistically. Krens has no anxieties about defininghimself as a corporate globalist who believes globalizationis beneficial and inevitable. He has no problem filling theworld up with American monoculture. In the new globaleconomy, museums can become tourist magnets and circuits of global power. Guggenheim Bilbao, for instance(and here I am much indebted to an excellent essay on thecorporatization of museums by Michael Brenson), hasdrawn 1.4 million people a year since it opened in 1997, andhas given a major economic fillip to the entire region.Ambitions for art have never been higher. So much so thatnow, Krens claims, "we have requests from every continentexcept Antarctica to build Guggenheim museums." Bilbaohas become a site of contemporary pilgrimage-at leastaccording to Krens, who likes to bill it as "the Chartrescathedral of the 21st century."In his essay, Brenson points out the unconcealed corporate imperialism in this new proof of cosmopolitanism.Corporate patrons like BMW financed the 1998"Art of theMotorcycle" exhibit, and Giorgio Armani allegedly contributed $15 million to the exhibition of his own fashiondesigns in 2002. Not only are these museum franchisesaround the world "ultramodern showcases" for brand

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name corporate trend-setters, but they are all controlledfrom New York and serve market-oriented mainstream artand culture, not local interests or histories. What appearsto be life at the cutting edge is really no more than a relicof elite privilege.In the wake of 9/11 and recent corporate scandals, theGuggenheim has had its share of financial setbacks,

employee layoffs, and canceled exhibitions. Somethingabout Krens's symbiotic relationship with the dominantcorporate culture seems to have touched a sensitive nerveof repugnance in the ar t world. In fact, while surfing theInternet for material on Krens, I had to wonder i f he hadbecome the Trent Lott of the art establi shrnent- someonewhose values were now an embarrassment to the party.There were several harsh indictments of his expansionistquest and alliance with the world of megacorporationsflaring in cyberspace."It is time for Guggenheim director Thomas Krens togo," stated one e-manifesto by Jerry Saltz, an art critic forthe Village Voice. "The trustees and board members whohelped him twist this institution into a kind of GuggEnronshould go as well . . . . Krens & Co. have turned this alreadyfragile museum into a rogue institution, broken faith withart, and stripped it of the reputation won for it by generations of artists and curators." That text was almost a yearold when I found it, but another had been pu t on the netthat very day by the New York Observer: an article by HiltonKramer entitled "Guggenheim Is Bust-Why Isn't KrensGetting the Boot?"Kramer charges Krens .with selling off the Guggen

heim's "permanent" collection to suppor t his spendthriftexpansion programs here and abroad, citing sales figuresreported in The Wall Street Journal. He assails Krens's"tomorrow-the-world ambitiqn" to create an ever-expanding,ever-more-costly Guggenheim empire, wi th satellite museums in Europe, Asia, and South America, "not to mentionthe ill-fated attempt to set up shop at the casino in LasVegas." Kramer laments the era of the modem masters andthe authoritative catalogues that accompanied their exhibitions in the past under previous curators, and views thecurrent disastrous state of the museum as "a casualty ofMr. Krens' o v ~ r r e a c h i n g ambition." Krens, of course, is stillaround, seemingly impervious to these assaults.

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All of which brings me back to the central theme of HasModernism Failed?: the mismatch between the imperativesof corporate capitalism and art. The great struggle betweenthe world of culture and the reward systems of the worldof money is far from resolved. Once the profit motive isviewed as the purpose of human existence, moneybecomes an all-consuming and increasingly self-destructiveobsession-and nothing can change for the better. For thisreason, my attention has turned increasingly toward adeeper exploration of institutional alternatives, andtoward those who are defining new paths. Adopting thisposition, I believe, is the only way to take the conversationto a new level.

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CHAPTER TEN:TRANSDISCIPLINARITYIntegralism and the New Ethics

How do individuals overturn a world view based oncompetition, exploitation, and profit, and break free of itslimiting ideologies? And (last bu t not least), where dospiritual and moral values fit in? In this final chapter, Ishall look to the possibility of finally trying to answer thesecrucial questions.For most of my lifetime, there has been an awkward,even a rigid, dualism between aesthetics and ethics-justas there has been a split between subject and object. In thesame way that science aggressively rejects religion, modem aesthetics has rejected ethics, as if the truths of the tworealms were somehow mutually exclusive and had little incommon. Few people are willing to talk about ethics andaesthetics in the same breath. Aesthetic autonomy is adeeply rooted idea-autonomy implying moral and socialseparateness as the condition of art-making. Kantian andCartesian epistemologies keep all the categories split up,bu t with a different, more unified vision of the world, ar tand ethics can perfectlyweU.coexist and cooperate.

In his book A Theory of Everything, Ken Wilber putsforth a world philosophy that weaves together the manypluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Easternas well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions, to suggest that the world is one undividedwhole, and related to itself in every way. The well-being ofeach part is the responsibility of every other part. Referringto the earlier ,cultural movements of traditionalism andmodernism, Wilber suggests that integralism is the next big149

globalization from "art after modernism"

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