metropolis m

‘Around 2005, we discovered the work of such artists as David Thorpe and Dennis Rudolph. Thorpe proposes new, impossible utopias, put together out of the fragments of the past’s disastrous dreams of the future. Rudolph, a German artist, works with symbolism from the pre-Nazi era. He seems to be creating an almost nationalistic narrative with concepts that are today very heavily laden. When we saw it, we asked ourselves, what is going on here? At more and more exhibitions, we saw a new generation of artists who are making a new kind of art. People do not just want to deconstruct, be ironic or play with conventions. They also – perhaps against their own better judgment – want to build something up again. This development has proven not to fit into Postmodernist concepts. It requires a new idiom.’

‘Metamodernism is not an art movement, but a “structure of feeling”. Following Postmodernism, there is now a new cultural dominant, as Fredric Jameson refers to it. This is connected with changing art, as well as with technological, economic and political developments. In art, the bigger story, political engagement, affect and craftsmanship have all returned. At the same time, the dream of cheap credit has disintegrated and it has also become clear that capitalism has to reinvent itself. As a result, the political and economic anchors of the 1990s have come loose from their moorings in all kinds of ways: the political centre fell apart, populism has won sway, an ecological crisis evolved and the Occupy movement developed. One can speak of a continuous oscillation between standpoints and tendencies, because everybody is looking for resolutions but there is no comfortable position from which to speak out. Every standpoint is undermined after a while by what you have learned or by what is happening around you. With Metamodernism, we are trying to pinpoint the sensibilities that have consequently established themselves and develop a language that is appropriate to them.’

‘I think that the sensibility that we are describing has been around for a longer time, for example in the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bas Jan Ader. But it was not dominant at that time, and now it is. In the 20th century, it was the Modernist structure of feeling that initially dominated, then the Postmodernist. Now there is a new generation that has grown up with the Internet, a generation that thought that they would be better off than the previous generation, which now seems very unlikely in light of the various crises. We have to relate to that changing reality. My students no longer have anything to do with Damien or Jeff Koons, but they do relate to Cyprien Gaillard and Ragnar Kjartansson.’

‘We can say that there is a certain sensibility that prevails, but which only takes form when something is produced. In this sense, it is not only artists, but also gallery owners and exhibition makers who are part of that process of making something. Postmodernist art is seen in magazines and museum exhibitions as a closed chapter. The Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 exhibition, which was recently presented at the V&A, is an example of this. At the same time, young galleries are frequently making striking choices for predominantly young artists who tell grand stories, who want to be sincere and enthusiastic. That is in part because there are people who buy such art.’

‘It is good to work in different situations and with different media, in order to get a feeling of what is actually taking place in the art world. Someone who takes a step back and only observes is often too late. By writing for blogs, popular magazines and scientific periodicals and by working on exhibitions and symposia, we are in close contact with people with diverse ideas. That way, I think, we have a broader view of what is happening than one would have from a purely academic position. It is a form of field research. To date, our theoretical reconnaissance of Metamodernism had primarily focused on New Romanticism. That was a single case, one that we developed in an exhibition in Berlin. Now we are looking at other developments.’

‘We realize that we are bound to our Western perspective; therefore, we refer primarily to Europe and North America. We were recently in Egypt to give a lecture about the connection between revolution and art, and we noticed that our analyses did not necessarily relate to the situation in that region. In fact, we were able to learn a lot about that from the speakers from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. We certainly had no intention of going there to tell them how the world was put together.’

‘One difference that we noticed in Egypt is that for Egyptian and Syrian artists and activists, irony is an important weapon in unmasking those who hold power. It makes it clear just how important context is.’

‘We grew up in the time of Postmodernism, with The Simpsons and South Park. If someone declares their love for someone else in public, the first thing you think is that it must be a joke. We can never again – and maybe it was not even possible before – be completely sincere. Irony is our natural state. Sincerity or being genuine becomes an attempt, a performance that you try to keep up for as long as possible.’

‘Optimism is one of the tendencies, but certainly not the only tendency in Metamodernism. It is no “hippie-ism”. It is comprised of many different aesthetic sensibilities, including telling stories, and they are not always rose-coloured.’

‘What it is all about is that people are again taking a position. For that reason, Metamodernism does not have to be optimistic. In our experience, it is really often expressed in attempts to construct, to build something up, as we see in Yael Bartana’s ironic but also hopeful and genuine manifesto The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland.’