It has been a long time coming to see one of the most populated events in the city of Toronto, Nuit Blanche, make some progress in actually being a night full of impressive art installations. The city’s favorite art crawl has really stepped it up a notch. Things were actually interesting for your humble servant.
It was interesting to also see that the art world is still dictated by the pretentious, as if a work of art cannot speak for itself. No, we live in a time and a world where everything must be explained in such detail. That a simple installation of driver-less cars encircling each other in opposite directions requires an entire paragraph of epilogue is truly a surprise.
There is where we find out that its true meaning is to shed light on “the schizophrenia of security” among others, and how enlightened the artist is for having thought up of such an installation, half of said paragraph being full of near-pornographic self-congratulatory babble.
Have we lost the ability to express ourselves as artists and as human beings ever since the avant garde movements of Communist Russian painters that we need such foolishness?
When a piece of art requires a paragraph of spoon-feeding synthetic meaning and purpose into the audience to the point of ridicule, there is some gross incompetence afoot. Either the incompetence of the piece to deliver transcendence and meaning on its own or the incompetence of the artist to communicate a message coherently to an audience.
Perhaps it’s both. I speak with great faith in the power of art. There is great work out there, and art has yet begun to truly reclaim its land from corporate monopolization.
The issue is that an event that wields such power and potential as Nuit Blanche can do better and invest in exposing artists and artworks that are competent enough to stand on its own two feet, and have a clear voice to speak its own words clearly.
Let’s be done with charlatans and incompetents who think that putting a urinal on display is some sort of avant garde narrative on the ills of society.
We’re all a little wiser than that, thanks.
Much love,
Zen Politics
“The White Night” – Published October 13, 2013
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