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The exhibition "PostDimension - A Journey in the Contemporary Art" has been planned to be consistent with the display area, that will be the austere and arcane structure of the tower. The selected artists [Alessandro Bulgini, Jürgen Klauke, Oleg Kulik, Katja Loher, Damir Očko, Yoko Ono, Daniele Puppi, Jean Toche, Markus Willeke, Lin Yilin] come from different geographical areas but have in common the aptitude for both languages and image processing experimentation, which leads to critical, uninhibited, communicative and even obsessive works. If a parallel dimension, or universe, is supposed to be a hypothetical universe which, even if well distinct and different from the one we know, coexists with ours, the "postDimension" derives from the reality, it has its foundation in the present world, a world immersed in a mass of contingent, utopian, ideological, paradoxical and subversive entities. A dimension which contains a multiverse of languages and a multiplicity of aptitudes. It seems the present world is reinventing itself, by using the process of globalization. We all know that time and space have been shortened by the advent of rapid means of transport and communication. It seems the colonialism has been exorcized and the modernity ridiculed. A big pressure, on the industrialized societies and on Asian communities, is bringing to life new capitalistic oasis, "free and democratic" areas, in the service of an "economic dogma". The multinational system, together with the global finance, is committed to spreading/importing mono-cultural products and far too much anesthetized life styles. On the contrary, the arts, while freely and receptively evolving, understand the global dimension and its effects and try to absorb it, by creating a "postReality": an inner dimension of the reality of a "flexible" identity, which is in perpetual movement. Nevertheless, they do not accept the compromise of an environment where art means mere exercise in style or extreme formal aestheticism. The post-reality aims to be a visual and conceptual reply to the current cognitive change, it sees the human experience as lead by an unstable process of cultures and nets assemblage, where it´s possible to "sail" and to "be shipwrecked" because of an oppressive, decentralized and ambivalent communication, which produces disorientation and absentmindedness. This way, the guest artists penetrate the perceptions of a complex, faded, uncertain, paradoxical and chaotic reality. The global environment becomes the location for an experience, which goes beyond geographical and ethnic boundaries, beyond classes and nationalities, religions and ideologies. It unites all human types. But it achieves a paradoxical unity (Marshall Berman), a dis-unity who puts us in "a maelstrom, in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish". The globalization erases the emotional side of human life, it cuts geographical distances, which favors political and economic trades. As a consequence, all conflicts among physical, emotional, individual and social forces are mystified, in order to promote a uniform and neutral language. The ego is insidiously canceled by creating a mythical and fake image of it, only apparently based on the principles of the exchange of values. For this reason, the structure based on the merit of the trade, on the free market and on the new communication technologies is clearly totally disposed towards the sphere of personal interests, towards the suppression of all affinities, reciprocities and dialectics. The proposal to open the door to new opportunities turns to be a mere illusion. "Anything resembling liberty or beauty is, in fact, only the screen of a deeper slavery". Lately, within all cultural environments, there seems to be an opposite and increasing tendency for differentiation, where all regions pursue their own cultural identity. In the arts, global and local realities are related and can stimulate creativity by communicating with each other. Some artists react with polyhedral subjects and means of expression (Bulgini, Willeke), like sound and performance (Klauke, Očko); on the other hand, after being put in new contests, others develop approaches and methodologies which involve the new technologies (Loher, Puppi) or sneak into the collective system of the mass media communication (Toche, Yilin). Elsewhere, some subversive physical procedures chosen by Oleg Kulik, such as turning himself into a dog who threats to bite the people passing by, and communicative methods developed by Yoko Ono show us the existence of interacting spaces, which are never aseptic or emotionless but, on the contrary, become vectors for mental, cultural and social issues. The postDimension project is also aimed to demythologize all those local externalizations that, consciously or not, wish to become global. Unfortunately, the arts, who are going through the global era, can never be quickly used up, because they are far from the production and consumption mechanism used for the obsolete images. The exhibition path designed for Torrione Passari goes beyond any intent of political propaganda and, in the meanwhile, steers clear of any praise of an art thought as something exotic or "trendy", a concept typical of the free market and the mass media celebrations and of the attitude for triumphalism, which is visible in some local government organizations. It is another stage of the reconnaissance survey of contemporary arts, started from Molfetta in the 2002, and of all its possible languages and linguistic facets. |
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