A short interview with [[Nicolas Bourriaud]], a French writer and curator at the Tate museum in London. He invented the term [[Altermodernism]].

'Alter' as a prefix means 'a multiplicity' or an 'otherness'. As a verb, it means to change.

He invented the term to announce the end of [[Postmodernism]]. Postmodern times are over, he says, and we don't know what comes after that. The "post" of postmodern implies an arrow-based understanding of history. But in today's society we are more crawling through a maze than riding on an arrow-- our job is to find meaning in the maze, which the altermodern may help with.

A crucial difference between the altermodern and the postmodern is that the altermodern is "global from scratch." There is no multi-culturalism, where people from different backgrounds come to some consensus by vaulting over their original backgrounds; the original background has the flavors and consciousness of a singular, global culture, brought on by the [[internet]]. (See also his mentions of [[creolization]] in [[A Conversation with Bourriaud and ARTnews]]).

The artists in his exhibition deal with the geography of history. There is no terra incognita anymore, the last continent (and newest dimension) to be discovered is time.

Has a quote I find really swell, as a matter of principle: "When I have answers, I am writing a book. When I have questions, I am curating a show."

Another very useful quote, from his manifesto:

...a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form, made of lines drawn both in space and time, materialising trajectories rather than destinations. The form of the work expresses a course, a wandering, rather than a fixed space-time.

Altermodern art is thus read as a [[Hypertext]]; artists translate and transcode information from one format to another, and wander in geography as well as in history. (from Altermodern explained: manifesto | Tate)

Filed in: [[Literature Notes]]

Related Links: [[The Computational Turn]], [[Yuk Hui]], [[Altermodernism]]