Nancy Adajania,
Boris Groys,
Ranjit Hoskote,
Dieter Lesage,
Suzana Milevska,
Stefan Nowotny,
Piotr Piotrowski,
Irit Rogoff, and
Bernd M. Scherer, among others, moderated by
Boris Buden
To call the West “former” doesn’t mean to simply assign it to the past. For, it is not the time of the West that has passed. It is instead the very idea of being in the command of time, the idea of progress that has lost its driving force. Not only is the West no longer the privileged designer of our future, the future itself no longer informs the world with which we wish to survive. And yet we move on as ever. Even now in a time obsessed with the past, devoted as it is to the cult of memory and the fetish of heritage, something still goes forward. Even now when there is no general direction, nor a subject who is supposed to lead, we cannot but ask where to place our next step, and what to take along or leave behind. Yet there are still prospects, or in philosopher Bruno Latour’s words, “the shapes of things to come.”
Following a week of deliberations with artists, students, theorists, and the public, this forum gathers together a number of contributors who deliver brief statements of not more than two to three minutes to address the prospects of today, taking the horizon of art as a platform from which to question the world. Envisioned not as a session to close FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects, but rather to open a prospective field ahead, rather than readymades or manifestos, this meeting offers a number of tentative proposals for further discussion with the public.