Contemporary is possibly one of our favorite adjectives when it comes to describing anything involving a creative process; whether it's music, dance, art or architecture. Adding the word to any of these fields, especially when working with timelines, helps us understand the nature or the aesthetic of said art, but it's still a pretty vague term. When we call something contemporary, are we automatically assuming it has been recently created? Going deeper into this line of thought, what is recent, and should all "recent" things be boxed together? Lydia Kallipoliti sheds some light into this topic, as well as the downside of pluralism in her essay Pluralism vs. The Cloud. On the other hand, and on his essay What is The Contemporary?, Giorgio Agamben analyzes different definitions of contemporaneity, all the while acknowledging that to understand the term, it is necessary to set chronological divisions. Together, both views can (if such a thing is even possible) help us navigate through the human dilemma of understanding time and its nature.
When studying art and design, it’s essential to know timelines. For Lydia Kallipoliti, the way data is presented speaks volumes about the author’s perspective on time itself. She begins her argument referencing Charles Jenck’s Evolutionary Tree to the Year 2000 (1971), a malleable timeline that uses evolutionary logic to document (and predict the future of) design history; focusing on a series of adjectives surrounded by design movements and names of their designers, all while curiously resembling a piece of abstract art. Another example of this pluralism, as Kallipoliti describes it, can be seen in Adrian Meyer’s timeline found in his book Synoptic Vision: Example of an Evolutionary History (2008). According to Kallipoliti, pluralism is counterproductive to history, as it reduces works of art and architecture to fit specific stylistic labels. If the world (and design along with it) change constantly, it’s only reasonable to accept different experiences and ideologies that don’t necessarily fit into a box. This is where Kallipoliti suggests a new alternative of recording history: the cloud. As opposed to Jenck’s tree, Kallipoliti’s cloud is a space of constant collaboration between creators from all fields. This approach, which is also based on statistics and analytics, paints a bigger picture of today’s diversity while avoiding historic bias.
It is exactly what we call today, or rather the contemporary, that Agamben philosophically reflects upon. Following Nietzsche’s notion of the term, contemporary would mean ill-timed; something occurring in a chronological mismatch. According to this definition, and because time itself is never still, a person that is fixed on a time period cannot be contemporary. Following an analysis on Osip Mandelštam’s poem My Century, and the relationship between time and the poet himself, Agamben proposes a new definition: contemporary meaning someone that is aware of the darkness shrouding their time (as the poem describes it, their “vek”). An analogy to the human eye’s natural response to darkness, this explanation refers to the acceptance of the present as a darkness, and the future as an immensely bright, yet unattainable, light. Put simply, it recognizes the present as archaic, but also embraces the past as our ultimate guide; because the past was, at some point in time, the light (yes, it's a loop). Hence, and following Agamben’s train of thought, it’s only possible to analyze contemporaneity when establishing
timeframes.
Both Kallipoliti and Agamben present different ways we can view time, one supporting diversity and fact-based evidence, and another prompting chronological divisions, as well as deeply introspective reasoning about the clashing of ages. As humans, and lucky for us, we are capable of coming into a state of contemporary awareness about what it means to be in the here-now and what is the future, that gray area we will eventually live through as a different present. The question is, can both perspectives coexist? The answer, like time itself, is relative.
References:
Agamben, G., Kishik, D., & Pedatella, S. (2020). What Is the Contemporary? In "What Is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays (pp. 39-54). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kallipoliti, L. (n.d.). Turtles Do Not Successfully Mate with Giraffes: Pluralism Versus the Cloud. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.academia.edu/23132953/Turtles_Do_Not_Successfully_Mate_with_Giraffes_Pluralism_Versus_Cloud
Wagner, K. (2019, October 28). Charles Jencks Tried to Make Sense of Architecture in a Messy Time. Retrieved September 17, 2020, from https://www.metropolismag.com/architecture/charles-jencks-mcmansion-hell/
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