Thursday, September 14, 2023

The Future of History


At no time in the future will our current moment be looked back on or discussed. Certainly not in negative critical terms. The Last Days of Liberal Democracy, no one will write, was characterized by a flowering of objects and gestures whose function was unequivocally and unambiguously concerned with healing. 

This was the art the corporate state didn't have to declare degenerate because, as before when modernist principles were being defined and implemented, nobody paid much attention to art unless the institutions that held it (museums, schools, libraries, online delivery systems) were negligent in defining it, expanding it, privileging the maker over the work.

Art's Therapeutic Turn, then, came in advance of what came to be called the Syrian Model of Governance, which saw populations under threat of a singular difference system based on immediate access to resources: you could either have that access (quick enough to save your life), or you couldn't. Presiding over this was a supreme leader who you were either with or against (indifference was considered a worse offence). Even writing about it would have you and your neighbourhood bombed.

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