4. the hyperrealization crisis

THE HYPERREALIZATION CRISIS

Like language, nutrition is a means to an end, a media through which content is transmitted. However, the form of food has become so hyperrealized that it often no longer contains anything whatsoever. Like Gehry’s or Oehlen’s abstractions which only represent with their language language itself, nutrition has become a simulacrum of food that has no substance at its core.

Krauss questions the concept of origin and originality. Sherrie Levine rephotographs photographs (eg, After Walker Evans). Nabisco is ‘food’. Hybridized wheat is hyperrealized. Nutritional substitutes are futuristic. In the green painting from Finland there is a clear origin in Nature. It is a nutritious- even broccoli-like- and meaningful painting.

Decline in American IQ: the Disturbing Facts

“IQ scores have been steadily falling for the past few decades, and environmental factors are to blame, a new study says,” -CNN, June 14, 2018 (https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html). The study (https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674), notes that things like nutrition and poor environmental conditions, not genetics, are to blame for the decrease.

Likewise, obesity is on the rise, literally hitting 39.8% of, or 93.3 million American adults. (https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html)

I think this is largely due to the hypperrealization of food products, which parallels the loss of meaning-formation in post-modern abstract painting.

The Collective Consciousness: Cultural Intelligence is A Collective Endeavor

objectivity: loss of subjecthood, loss of self in object-love, developing objective perception through the eyes of others.

Objectivity is always limited to the number of monads of consciousness who participate in that sphere of consciousness. For example, cults believing themselves to be objectively correct in their views. Maybe if the entire universe consisted of that cult’s members, they would achieve some type of state of correctness, in the denotative, linguistic, or perhaps structuralist sense of the word ‘correct’, ie they are deemed by their society to be correct. However, they may still not be correct in a Platonic sense of Correctness. If the entire world consisted of members of a wacko cult who believed in abusing each other, and there was one clear-sighted person who objected to this abuse, within the cult this individual may be considered incorrect, while they are Correct in the Platonic sense.

I bring up this issue of relativism, because I subjectively believe our society's relativistic standards for what qualifies as "nutrition" and "culture" are flawed. I really don't think anyone should be eating Nabisco crackers, or only being exposed to literature via online "content". We make things like algorithms to determine what qualifies as quality content online, but these are also flawed, broken, and used to manipulate users into buying junk- like Coke and cigarettes etc. are a sad imitation of food, hawked to people at the expense of their health and well-being. I also feel that being conscious of the content of our environments comes down to individual people making choices about what they expose themselves to. It is my hope that th_Eroses can be a site of genuine and open discussion about cultural flux, that helps people to better understand how and what the world means- as well as a mere, regular, human person can assist in that collective endeavor.

So, in response to cultural issues in America: read a book, write, encourage your friends and family to do the same, grow vegetables if you can, and if not, at least be conscious to think of food as something that should have real content, like language.

CURRENT ISSUES & CONCERNS

Current Issues & Concerns

Photographability and social media as either utopian (universal access to art) or dystopian (impairing meaning-formation)
Shallowness /contextlessness & lack of meaning-formation
Intertextuality- ability to access vast stores of information immediately through hyperlinks.
Crowd-sourcing narratives- artist in service to a group of people who are involved in the artist’s life.
Avatars / vicariousness
The hyperlink / shifter (embedded v externally referential information)
Strength of character
Creating limited networks of consciousness, e.g. turning away from research-based conceptualism
language that represents something rather than language that represents language.

an aside: I don’t feel that Readymades are relevant to my generation at all.

Maybe, the readymade language that comprises the metalanguage, readymade personality types in the form of AI, etc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Many of the footnotes and conversations in this piece are referring to specific texts in Rosalind Krauss’ book of art critical texts:

Krauss, Rosalind E. The Originality of the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

We love Rosalind Krauss.

If we’re talking about Duchamp, Vito Aconcci, the medium of video, mirrors, and indices, etc. please infer that the dialogue stems casually from musings upon readings of her texts about these issues.

The information on currency disunification that references Dominguez:

Dominguez, Virginia R. "Representing Value and the Value of Representation: A Different Look at Money." Cultural Anthropology 5, no. 1 (1990): 16-44. doi:10.1525/can.1990.5.1.02a00020.

For the Taoist text Secret of the Golden Flower:

Cleary, Thomas. The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classic Chinese Book of Life. New York: HarperOne, 1991.

Author’s Note: This text was written casually, in a stream of consciousness manner. If at any point there is a phrase not cited or attributed correctly, feel free to contact the author at theroses.directors@gmail.com and we will gladly resolve.