"The Effect of Contemporaneity" | Echo Gone Wrong Magazine

Echo Gone Wrong magazine has just published the first part of the series of my reflections on contemporary art called "The Effect of Contemporaneity." In it you will find some observations about how contemporary art is intertwined with capitalism to an extent of there being no distinction between the two.
 What is of particular interest to me is the way the latest trends and theoretical shibbolets are imported into the global 'province' where artists are eagerly turning themselves into the self-managing entities ready for the overwhelmingly interconnected techno-reality. This is the moment when we witness a sudden and unreflected turn towards what is trending—e.g., things like posthumanism, speculative realism, new materialism, metamodernism, etc.—topics that are exploited without questioning the conditions under which they are introduced in the first place. It is now a common sense that every emerging artist—anywhere in the world—should aspire to the hights of the 'global art market.' Artists, especially those who come from the so-called 'underdeveloped world' or (to use a socio-political term) 'East', learn to embrace these conditions of artistic recognition as something 'natural.'

On the Rejuvenation of Contemporary Culture

After encountering numerous press releases and official blurbs for the contemporary art events, I could not help to notice that, apparently, it has now became a rule of thumb to include the sentences like "So-and-so (b. 1990-ish) is an independent curator based in [Amsterdam/London/New York]. She graduated in [art-related-something] at the [University of X] with a research thesis on [trendy name]." The thing is that when you are a twenty-something graduate (and the majority of the contemporary executives and curators indeed are), your "research thesis" (which is often simply a cooler way to name an MA degree) is at best only a first academic attempt at coherence and rigorousness, and it is still not even close to a research. Absolute majority of academics I spoke with admit that their BAs and MAs are, well, sh*t (and I include myself in this list), because thinking and writing does not come easy when you are still a fresher. Let's be frank here—our "research theses" of the tender age are nothing but stepping stones into the "real work" that begins only after you embarass yourself with those naive attempts at grandeur and originality. However the tendency to include the achievements into the bios of the new wave of emerging wunderkinds of contemporary art is just astounding. In other words, the truth of this trend is quite clear: in many respects the actuality of contemporary art belongs to freshers that are quick at self-representation, mimicry, and networking. They know what they want—immediately and instinctively, like baby turtles that go straight towards the sea as soon as they hatch from their eggs—and their first attempts at anything are the ultimate good of whatever is meant by contemporary culture. Critical thinking is not included. They don't change their minds. And if they do, the culture follows.

"The State of Critique in the Times of Accellerationism"

Just finished the paper onthe state of critique that has been published in the Echo Gone Wrong magazine. See the abstract below and this is the link to the full text.

The paper addresses a problem of dismissal in relation to the critical engagements with the contemporary culture. It will be argued that in the hyper-networked and post-institutional world critique is often subjected to the demand to be ‘constructive’—a violent gesture according to which critique either fails to fulfil this demand and becomes dismissed and marginalised, or it embraces the given conditions and becomes dependent on them thus ceasing to be ‘critical’ in the strict sense of the word. Instead of being critical of the complex conditioning beyond the new manifestations of accellerating capitalism, critique either accepts the demonisation and marginalisation, or embraces the given state of events as something that is ‘uncriticisable.’ Thus critique faces a challenge of finding its voice in the world where all our practices—both subversive and recreational—are no longer immune to capitalisation. I will insist that a deconstructive approach provides us with a chance to escape the violent dichotomy of victim/immune system and embrace the autoimmunity of everything that contemporary culture renders as ‘pure’ and ‘necessary’—i.e., immune from thinking, reflection, and critique.