Post-Postmodern = Altermodern?

I picked up the newest copy of Adbusters today - a publication that I can't decide equals brilliance or neo-hipster arrogance - and I read a very interesting piece by a Douglas Haddow. Well, the first half of it was interesting anyway. The later half goes on and on on a droll anti-capitalistic tirade, which may have been interesting if it had said anything new or offered any new ideas on how to fix it instead of just lamenting about how awful it is. But the first half is all about the newly crowned Altermodern, taken from The Tate's Triennial of the same name, of 2009. It heralds that the Postmodern is finally dead, and the Altermodern has slayed the Warholian beast and taken the crown! Hooray!

Haddow makes very good commentary on Lady Gaga and Kanye West which I might go into later, but all his critique of Altermodern, thought up by French theorist/curator Nicolas Bourriaud, was so scathing I had to check it out. I must admit I hadn't heard that Postmodernism was dead yet, being that it is splashed all over every piece of media on the entire planet, and I was eager to see what had taken its' place.

So I headed over to the Altermodern Manifesto and as I read it, I swear I had multiple intellectual orgasms . . . Artists looking at multiculturalism and identity? Yes! Globalised perception? Oh yes! A stripping of a western centered ideal and moving toward polygamous, multi-national ideal on how to view the world?! YES, YES DON'T STOP!

Then, out of nowhere, it went soft. Why? Because I looked at the work in the show. I had thoughts and feeling streaming back to me as when I saw 2008's Whitney Biennial. The whole show, (with admittedly a few gems spread around within), was for the most part, a pure mess of sheepish artists with clearly no leader all, wandering about, taking up grass, chewing it up into cud for a bit and then spitting it out and calling it art.

The Tate's Triennial evokes the same response.

Not to be crass, but seriously, what the fuck man? Mr. Bourriard puts together this fabulous manifesto about global perspective and multinational artistic leadership, and this is it? If it is, then my friends, Postmodern is not dead at all. All it has done is pulled a Madonna and reinvented itself into something that encompasses new ideals but is really the same old mess deep down. And no offense to Madonna for comparing her to this.

Granted, I have not seen the show in person. And perhaps if I somehow do see it somewhere in its' entirety, I will eat every last one of words right down to the serifs. And in some ways, I actually do hope I'm wrong. Because if this is what the next wave of art is going to look like - not only does it not encompass anything the Altermodern Manifesto says - I think all of us other artists who are producing work that actually follows more of the manifesto will have our work cut out for us . . . no pun intended.

I will say that I agree with Haddow about one thing. If Altermoderism fails, it will be because it is an extension of Modernism in the first place. It fails to get at the root. And if it's anything the closing of the last decade taught humanity, it's that society needs a good uprooting not just a good weed-whacking.

Oh, and might I just add that the anti-capitalist Adbusters has an article praising Avatar . . . I'm just saying.