A Future Without Spectacle: A Refuge from Cultural Hegemony in Contemporary Art and Neo-Humanism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31542/j.muse.188Abstract
Abstract
This paper explores possibilities for the future of popular culture. Central to the arguments in this paper, is the search for a remedy to a visual culture that has been left deconstructed and fragmented by a Western obsession with postmodernism. This paper begins with a discussion of Boris Groy’s “society of spectacle without spectators” (2012) and the ramifications of such an observation as homological to the state of contemporary art and the human subject. A discussion of the works of modern and contemporary artists is used to illustrate contemporary art’s metonymic relationship to the future of popular culture. Specific examples are explored such as German photographer and film maker Thomas Demand’s works that create a “critical fiction” Liljegren (2013) to highly engage the spectator and are juxtaposed with postmodern speculations such as Baudrillard’s simulacra.
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