Recontextualisation is upcycling
a guided tour through the political peculiarities of the architectural memory by Denis Maksimov - presented at Marres Currents #3 in Maastricht in 2015
The architecture is the most political form of artistic manifestation. The architect’s function is comparable to the one that is assigned to deities in religion: masterminding the experience of a space. Enormous Gothic cathedrals had communicated the power of the divine, while lavish royal estates and palaces highlighted the invisible, but uncrossable line between commoner and aristocrat. In the epoch of modernism, advancement of industrial revolution and liberal capitalism, the proportion of utilitarianism in design and architecture suppressed aesthetic concerns. Le Corbusier introduced to the world the idea of clean-slate practicality in response to the process of democratisation and sharp increase in demand for the spaces. The political role of architecture was meant to be forgotten, just like the representational role in painting was to be abandoned in the eyes of Kasimir Malevich in radical Russian Suprematism. However the strategy of negation, and that is true for both art and architecture, created new ideology rather than anti-ideology. Herostratus burned the Temple of Artemis in search for eternal fame, and prohibition of mentioning his deed and name immortalised his destructive role even without major efforts from media - just like Islamic State fighters attacks of Palmyra.
Ideology of ever-penetrating utilitarianism, the totalitarian control of ‘logos’ (rationalism) over ‘pathos’ (intuition), makes such acts incomprehensible for the public consciousness. Moreover, arrival of modernism twisted time-space perception to the contemporary phenomenon of ‘ever-lasting present’ - the buildings in architecture, as they are constructed for particular function, automatically presupposed to serve this function eternally ‘as of now’, unconsciously presuming their relevance in the period when history as the process of changing epochs has finished.
The dichotomy between the potential that architecture possesses and out-timed practical relevance is evident in the building you find yourself inside at the moment, former Opel garage, that has been ambitiously re-appropriated as ‘Marres aan de Maas’.
Memory is a peculiar thing. Conversion of the former bastion of advancing culture of ever-penetrating consumer capitalism into the institution of contemporary art signifies an important process of transition from modernist society to the next formation of common living. Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, which still defines the way we approach the overall majority of the aspects of our existence, is incredibly strong. It is an example of meta-ideology, which frames thinking on the level of unconsciousness - the hardest level to reach for any educator. Notions of ‘work’, ‘product’, ‘service’ and so on define the very matrix of our ’reality’.
So here comes contemporary, post-conceptual art. Impractical, hard to grasp, annoying curious. ‘The art market’, ‘art impact’ and expanded field are outlining the space of employment of aesthetics as the tool for achieving specific goals of design. The second half of 20 century is the epoch of advancing ultra-capitalism, where everything had become a ‘product’ of ‘labour’ - even the life itself, as it was brilliantly demonstrated by Michel Foucault.
But in our time, we might be heading towards the world where the very notion of ‘work’ might pass
into the history. The concept of unconditional income has the potential to change the way we
approach the essence of what does it mean to be human in fundamental sense of the word.
Following this, ‘the art world’ won’t be seen anymore in the light of utilitarianism. Art as a tool of
education and emancipation in left-oriented thinking or as mere aesthetic design for packaging of the
consumer products both represent the mode of rapprochement of the artistic activity as a specific tool
within utilitarian model of society as a machine. But deep thinking about art as a pure language of
culture is missing in public debates.
The robotic labour, artificial intelligence and automatisation of utilitarian functions can bring two
outcomes.
The first option is a total war caused by increasing gap of inequality between rich (who will be getting
even richer) and poor (who will become more numerous and poorer), in case the current, ultra-
capitalist model of inheritance and succession would not be challenged by structural reformation.
The second option is ‘recontextualisation’ of utilitarianism through artistic activity and triggering the liberation of artistic geniuses in every one of us. Which one is to choose - depends on the choices we make as political animals. Intuition, fantasy and pathos is something machine cannot imitate. Systematisation and automatisation of humanism leads to the cornered and horrific dangers of approaching intuitive ‘pathos’ of human nature as an animalistic sickness.
As you see in case of Marres aan de Maas, this monument to the process of ‘upcycling’, modernisation and re-appropriation of the utilitarian architecture, there is no need to destroy the old world in order to build the new one. Contemporary post-conceptual art can play the role of interlocutor, Charon, who has capacity to peacefully guide crossing the waters of poisonous postmodern Styx. The waters of multiple crises, desperation and sense of lostness in the world of multiple realities, where one is claiming not only the opinion, but the facts as well. Demystification of political claims is hard to achieve in the flux of postmodern manipulations with the media - however attention to culture as an ultimate centrepiece of constituting ‘human’ have potential to provide an alternative.
Strategies of ‘upcycling’ and ‘recontextualisation’ by the means of artistic interventions are meant to reduce the tension of ‘uselessness’, assigned to history and anything that does not fit into closed systemic views, which are dictated by the narrative of contemporary utilitarianism. The space, that once was selling cars, is currently offering possibilities for (self)reflection and thinking beyond the certain borders of design. The complexity of it’s memory and initial utilitarian function are not meant to be forgotten. It should be analysed on the level of it’s unconscious formation - to rethink ideology, one need to look into the elements of it’s initial constitution: the architecture and functionality of public spaces being the perfect example.
If the Opel garage can be reimagined into the ‘museum at the sea’, why couldn’t the nation state be ‘upcycled’ into the form of common living, that will not have egocentric, inevitably ‘game-over-winner- takes-it-all’ resulting nature?