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Curator's Statement
Introduction
Last and Universal: the Semantics of Judgment
Thought Through Images
Seduced by Freedom of Thought
Art in the Age of Short-Term Memory
A Call to Artists and Audience
Seventeen Modern Tales
Art in the Age of Short-Term Memory
We are now witnessing
another sea-change.
Today we live in an age in which information comes to us in “real time,”
with no less a goal than “total coverage.” Time has been reduced
and compressed to an instant, and space has been expanded to the entire surface
of the planet.
Today we consume information like fast food, at the highest rate in human
history. The age of short-term memory is the age of endless information flow,
a continuous bombardment of reality and virtuality in a continuous chain of
displacement and replacement. The present moment becomes an eternity and the
world seems ever smaller.
Paradoxically, while information is perceived as more real and true than ever
before, it has acquired volatility as never before. Information becomes old
the moment it is received.
Now consider a key notion of the experience of art – namely the fact
that the artwork conveys a message that expresses the artist’s worldly
or spiritual agenda. Is it appropriate to ask whether art’s message
becomes “old” and therefore “disposable” in the same
moment it is received and assimilated, just like any other kind of information?
In a culture that triumphantly declares “I consume, therefore I am,”
it seems that art -- much like science and war -- has been transformed into
entertainment.
Entertainment is the art of distracting or diverting attention from worries.
In a culture of entertainment, information does not necessarily lead to communication.
