What is contemporary? Art in the Age of the Internet, Amnesia, and the Anthropocene
Keywords:
Art Criticism, Contemporary Art, Anthropocene, Environmentalism, Global WarmingAbstract
What defines good contemporary art is a hotly debated question. This article argues that contemporary art is fundamentally defined by a superabundance of information: data upon data upon neverending data. The contemporary artist no longer needs to create anything new, there is already so many ideas, so much information, that the problem is a matter of the re-presentation of the ideas that have already been had, the information that has already been collected, the knowledge that has already been known, to the audiences that need to be exposed to that information at the right time. The role of the contemporary artist is closer, then, to the librarian or the curator, a figure who contect audiences to the resources they need, even if the audiences don't necessarily know it yet.
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