"...cultural choices are options that can be combined and superimposed. Nothing counts, since nothing really binds us or requires us to commit ourselves. Let us recall the great Nietzschean question of eternal return: are you willing to relive for all eternity the moments you are experienceing right now? Transposed to the realm of art, this question entails a commitment to values, a space traversed by conflicts, by wagers with consequences for the future." pg. 80
This has a lot to do with the "precarious" and "radicant" nature of society today. We live in a world now that has the ability to pick up and move, change identity, transition, translate, remix and hybridize cultures so rapidly. A wanderer, a transitory person, has no commitment to something solid. Why would they want to, when that would only hold them back from their wandering character.
It is almost too easy to gather information and take ideas from all over the world, all over space and all over time. With this excess of of material to work with, it makes it much more difficult for artists to commit to one particular value. With this being said, what makes somthing more important than something else? With this much material to use, how can something truely count?
I think that the Neitzchean statement about reliving your choices is something that not many think of these days. There are so many choices to be made when given so many options; it is more likely that one would think they have the option to change what they've done and try again with something else, rather than thinking harder about their initial decision.
2. Control + S (universe)
Bourriaud comments that our universe is able to hit Control+S and move on. I am in total agreement with this idea of our lives becoming hard drives of information storage. I can relate to this in a couple of ways. One with photographs. The internet and computer world have allowed us to download our camera's photographs, save as many as we want (hundreds, thousands, millions???) and look at them later. Print them later? I don't think so. We take thousands of snap shops knowing that someday we can go back and look at them or use them later. But what happens to their value when they are just merely stored on a thumb drive, a cd, an external hard drive or just a memory card. I think that the preciousness and value of not just photographs, (emails, journals, art image catalouges, documents) is lost when it is stored away in a tiny chip.
Yes, we can access things as many times as we please. But how does that change one's reaction to something when they are able to view it at any time, rather than only in its initial state? Do you really take in the "aura" of that photograph, video, journal article? Or do you skim through it, knowing someday you could return to it?
3. Nicolas Bourriaud: the radicant himself:
This reaction is simply and observation of the criticism of Nicolas Bourriaud. He discusses the present day artist as a radicant thinker, a wanderer and a remixer of time, culture and global content. I feel that he writes in the essence of a radicant as well. He describes the different locations in which he writes (hotel rooms, etc). Knowing that he is not sitting in a study writing his material, it can be assumed that he takes the role of the radicant by traveling (which is only necessary for artists and art critics to do in order to gain their material). He is constantly remixing and piecing together his writing with quotes of others to form new ideas. His thoughts are hybrids of his own with a direct "hyperlink" to others of the past and present - joining content through space and time, much like a radicant would do.
An example of this can be found on page 92, when Bourriaud references twentieth century art critic, Baudelaire.
4. I think that Bourriaud's reference to Gregor Schneider's house construction is a clear example of our past coming out through the present. I think of the present as a wheel barrow moving through space. The contents of the wheel barrow are collected and dispersed whenever and wherever the driver wishes. I am believer in Bourriaud's quote, "the past is always present".
Gregor Schneider "Dead House"
5. Geocustomization
Bourriaud is correct when he describes our world to be completely seen in every corner through statellite programs such as "Google Earth", Global Positioning Systems, Mapquest, etc. In the virutual internet world, we have discovered every inch of land. There is no unknown space. However, I think that we are very much like early cartographers who have seen the world for the first time. It was up to them to make the public aware of their global opinions, whether they were factual or not. We have the evidence and data to create our own worlds, much like the earlier cartographers did and sold to the public. They were maps, or conglomerations of the imaginary and their perception of reality.
Bourriaud references artists, Julie Mehretu, Miltos Manetas and Matthew Ritchie as artists who create "Geocustomizations" of our planet. I think that their use of line and drawing are formal evidence of the cartographic and topographic world that we live in, depicted in their own imaginary way. He also is clear when he discusses the language of moving through time and space with line - and not just in one dimension.
"Topography used so much by contemporary artists, defines a pictorial site that is geared to the viewer's real movements in everyday life. Walking constitutes a text in itself, which the artwork translates into a language of topology." pg 121
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