So again, the focus of this little forum is on us in the
past tense, generally. The point of this is to gain a certain outsider’s
perspective on any number of our own practices, symbols, or traditions. The most common lens through which to
see this is the post-apocalyptic lens. However, there are other viewpoints, and
they are not always backward glances.
In art and media, the post-industrial is one such
perspective. This term (often used in music but also in painting, architecture,
and sculpture) is still a somewhat poorly defined one. Essentially, it can be read to
mean vocabularies that suggest traditions or practices that might follow our
own industrial / consumer age. Something from a proposed future, but stripped
of the conventions that we feel make us modern today. This is where the topic
becomes quite relevant to this blog.
Themes in post-industrial art often include the renaming of
past objects, the appropriation of symbols, the valuation of debris, the
hybridization of vocabularies, and often a new primitivism that might follow
the fall of industrial and consumer culture. Some of these premises are present
in post-apocalyptic culture, but in post-industrialism there is not necessarily
a presumed disastrous event or collapse. Just mutation, evolution, or fundamental paradigm
shift. Also a more probable future.
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“Burning Rods” by Anselm Kiefer
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A building in London by Sarah Wigglesworth
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Handmade album cover art by :Zoviet*France:
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Atelier Complex by Anslem Kiefer
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“Constructed Chaos” by James Ciosek
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Repurposed High Line train tracks in New York
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Daniel Bell’s 1973 economic discussion of post-industrial
society.
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