Altermodenist Fiction

I've recently completed editing The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, with Brian McHale and Joe Bray. As part of the collection, I wrote an essay on 'Altermodernist Fiction'. Obviously, I can't share that here, but I'm sure a few details won't do any harm!

Altermodernism is, according to Nicolas Bourriaud, the cultural milieu in which we now find ourselves. Bouriaud introduced this conception of the present epoch and its artistic movement in the most recent triennial at London art institute Tate Britain in 2009. The exhibition, which Bourriaud curated, continued the Tate's triennial project in showcasing the best in new British art. The exhibition featured artists such as Charles Avery, Peter Coffin, David Noonan amongst others.

In the exhibition catalogue, Bouriaud reveals that, to some extent, altermodernism has a literary inspiration: the writings of W. G. Sebald. As such, in my essay 'Altermodernist Fiction', I consider the features of contemporary experimental altermodernist fiction. As I explain, altermodernism is "defined by an implicitly politicised aesthetic resistance to globalisation, refusing standardisation, stability, or stasis". Moreover, altermoderist fiction (in line with Bourriaud's consideration of altermodernist art practices are characterised by the treatment of Form, Time, and Identity.

In the essay, I provide analysis of four texts: W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, Liam Gillick's Erasmus is Late, Brian Castro's Shanghai Dancing, and Charles Avery's The Islanders.

British Art Show 7

The British Art Show is organised every 5 years by Hayward Touring and showcases leading and emerging British artists. British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet (BAS7) is on at the Hayward Gallery at the moment, and so I took myself down there on Friday as a treat.

BAS7 featured 39 Artists exploring themes of history, temporal continuity, and parallel worlds. Overall, I found the exhibition invigorating. As is always the case, there were highs and lows in the collection for me. I'm going to use this blog to mention some of the stand-outs.



Christian Marclay - The Clock (Video) was one of the reasons I went to the exhibition in the first place. I was so excited about it, and it did not disappoint.

The Clock is a 24hr video that is composed of found video clips from countless films; each flim-clip or fragment features a reference (visual or verbal) to time. What's really cool about this work though is that as we watch these clips, narrating a disjointed story of sorts, the film-time unfolds in real time. As a viewer, you are both intensely involved in the bizarre story of the screen while being hyper-aware of how long you have been watching the piece. Your attention is somehow strangely split or perhaps it oscillates between the fictional and the real. I also really liked the fact that the film seemed to be littered with meta-comments about time.
I started watching The Clock at 12.10. It was hard to drag myself away.



Elizabeth Price - User Group Disco (Video) was the other video piece that I was really engaged by.

Set in a "fictional institution", this piece explores parallel worlds, while merging worlds through a clash of visual, verbal, and sonic register: images of kitsh porcelain and metallic utensils, corporate ppt text, and the music of A-ha (Take on Me). What I thought was really fascinating about User Group Disco was the way that it seemed to gather momentum, exposing the ideology of the corporate discourse and casting it in an unsettling light.



Charles Avery - The Islanders; Onomatopoeia also explored parallel worlds, this time a parallel world of the artist's own creation. And on a epic scale: The world of Onomatopoeia is a four-year project for the artist. The project features large scale pencil drawings, sculptures and installations. On display at BAS7 was an installation and a sculpture. It was the drawing that caught my eye.

I've seen Avery's work before at the Tate Triennial on Altermodernism, but this was the first time I'd seen his drawing. Its sheer size and detail really work to bring the world alive, and the comical yet grotesque figures who populate this world disturb and thrill the viewer in equal measure.



David Noonan - Untitled (Tapestry is the final work I'd like to mention here. Another large-scale item, Noonan's piece is a monochrome tapestry which collages images by overlaying or superimposing them.

The effect is both beautiful and haunting. The images and the worlds they represent are somehow coexistent, blending different periods and cultures within the space of a solitary tableau.



Ultimately (as you can probably tell), I loved British Art Show 7. Ironically given the theme, and felt particularly while watching The Clock, I wanted more time there!