art book group, an expedition

So, I toddled along to find out what everyone else knew, didn't know, was doing, wasn't doing, got, didn't get, see a text being slid under the steak tenderizer, and surprisingly that text escaped relatively unharmed: tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern slid around the room like a socially-polished guest, and a polite one - it didn't outstay it's welcome, politely greeted by all and then promptly vaporized.

Scathing - but here it is: one of the things that seems to be in every artists toolkit is the ability to whip out the drum, at any and every given moment, and bash it as loudly as possible - the vocalisation of frustration, of the deep-seated desire to be heard, the velocity of opinion rooted in a conviction that it must be right if I say it again enough, and ashamed to add that I am one of that melee. A damning indictment of what was, in reality, a very pleasant evening, but the drumbeats near and far detracted from a more focused exploration of some of the concepts that Altermodern could bring.

To personify: Altermodern, I suspect, may have felt downhearted. The catalogue text, and the seminal amazon.com/Relational-Aesthetics-Nicolas-Bourriaud and amazon.com/Postproduction-Nicolas-Bourriaud are riveting books: to me, the equivalent of the Bible. It can do some of the same things: changes thinking, reframes the context in which I perceive and operate. Bourriaud uses exhibitions to ask a question, and writes papers/articles/books to draw these strands together. 

Socially engaged practice is a small but expanding field in terms of practitioners, and in my understanding this artform (not to be confused with media or material or 'stuffness', or discipline ie print, painting, sculpture) - this artform is an exchange, a dialogue between philosophy, religion, sociology, geography... It's related to 'socially-engaged practice', the high church of community art, a weird mix of the insanely autobiographical on the scale of a neuron, and the platform of the philosophically trancendental, mixed with the ideology of a '70's happening with the context of a techno-frenzied child.  Let's say I know what I do (which isn't always it), I know it when I see it, and go read the book yourself.  Bourriaud can be seen to be discussing AlterModern tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern, and also on youtube which is instantaneously accessible, and there ends this rant.