Below is an article comprised of randomly contributed images by three different artists:
As ubiquitous as pouting in the bathroom while taking selfies with your iPhone, feeding your favourite poster of a drug taking, rule breaking, pop star a questionable spoon of pinkish gloop is apparently our future.
In our technological environment of an ever increasing saturation of imagery, Guy Debord may in fact have been right after all. No longer living with authenticity, culture is entirely subsumed into the mediated image and a muddled divergence from reality. The blurring boundaries of truth and fiction have never been so opaque.
In our technological environment of an ever increasing saturation of imagery, Guy Debord may in fact have been right after all. No longer living with authenticity, culture is entirely subsumed into the mediated image and a muddled divergence from reality. The blurring boundaries of truth and fiction have never been so opaque.
For Eleanor Heartney, the Postmodern is entirely subsumed in this notion of mediation image and a removal from reality. In her 2001 book published by Tate, Heartney outlines three examples that signify the postmodern in culture. Firstly, the 1991 Gulf War[1] was portrayed in the media not by images from the ground as was historically used to portray war, but was delivered through footage of surveillance equipment recorded by the air forces themselves from the air. Secondly, a community in Florida known as Celebration was the brainchild of, and funded by, the Disney Corporation[2]. This small American town has been entirely constructed to conform to a kitsch, nostalgic version of a mythological perfect location. This is a place to “Live. Work. Play”, according to their breezy, utopian website. Finally, and perhaps most bleakly, Heartney describes the Lascaux cave in France as another perfect example of Postmodernism. These caves contain exquisite paintings of hunting scenes from the Palaeolithic era. They are however no longer accessible to the public. “What is available” Heartney articulates “are re-creations of the caves and their paintings in a nearby quarry [which] has done nothing to dim their appeal to the thousands of yearly viewers.” [3] It is not just that these cultural phenomenon are a removal from reality, we are told, it is that this absence or void is not even seen. For the author, “Each affirms the notion that we live within the sway of a mythology conjured for us by the mass media, movies and advertisements.”[4] We are so departed from reality we no longer even see this as a departure.