How do you feel about modern art and starchitecture...

How do you feel about modern art and starchitecture? Is it possible to criticize these movements from the left without being seen as a philistine?

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impossiblenothing.bandcamp.com/album/phonemenomicon
youtube.com/watch?v=uvDzaQOSZ3E
youtube.com/watch?v=KL_Bbyi3ub8
youtube.com/watch?v=qBruGdkcWAgSOrAwCDWvU
youtube.com/watch?v=S_F-0xymK5g
youtube.com/watch?v=2sNFw_IQE3M
youtube.com/watch?v=_1NaR4jr-8k
youtube.com/watch?v=OT7atti5GS8
virtualdreamplaza.bandcamp.com
youtube.com/watch?v=8nQSRl8kMmk
thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/burial_unedited-transcript
k-punk.org
youtube.com/watch?v=g6UAKCU5vEs
jacobinmag.com/2016/06/zaha-hadid-architecture-gentrification-design-housing-gehry-urbanism/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

its ok. personally, i think art and music is at a low point in human history.

Some of it is quite beautiful, some of it's awful. What'cha gonna do.

As someone who loves art, I thoroughly, thoroughly disagree. The really good shit has just gotten harder to find. Film in particular is starting to go through a renaissance that hasn't been seen, imo, since the beginning of the millennium. Same goes for music, especially electronic music. Popular Art has become total spectacle tho

But does music come with the same insane financial and environmental burden that some architecture these days does?

I don't know; to me it's just a huge ever-present "fuck you" to the working class.

Well? Don't just hold back on us. Where can we get some of the good stuff?

link me some music that you think will prove me wrong. i'm very into music and i think we're in a decline in quality from 5 years ago.

What genres do you like?
What do you think has changed in the last five years?

Yeah I mean totally. There are plenty of books about the philosophy/ideology of architecture. One only need look at the backlash against Brutalism. From Bauhaus to Our House is a pretty good place to start.

I mean what kinda music do you like man? I think a lot of the good new stuff is pretty hard to listen to.

what is that even supposed to mean? like music that sells well, or music that's popular? or do you think music in general is in recline?

i particularly like electronic music. i'll listen to anything you think will prove me wrong. My guess as to why edm (which i'm going to use as a blanked term for electronic music) is declining is that artists have realized that to make money you have to play shows and to play shows you have to cater to drunk and drugged out people. your music doesnt have to push any boundaries, just have a simple kick pattern and loud bass.

Music that i think was good 5 years ago: mord fustang, porter robinson, blackmill, skrillex, sub focus, netsky, flume, pendulum, etc…

Don't really care either way but most people complaining about modern art/architecture are just reactionary rodents.

You just have to look into other electronic genres. Techno in particular is really good these days. I especially like material coming out of Nothern Electronics and Posh Isolation.

A reactionary might look at a building and think "degenerate"
But when I look at many of the same structures I think "inefficient and non-functional; does not serve the needs of the people"
To me it just seems like the height of liberal hubris.

listened to them both. not my style. also as far as modern art goes, it seems to me to be more about the idea that all art is equal. so yes… degenerate.

Mark Fisher wrote extensively about how culture doesn't evolve anymore, especially electronic music, as a symptom of capitalist realism. I can't find any specific text on his blog right now but maybe some other user can help me out

Patrician spotted

Try some of this stuff, tho your mileage may vary:
impossiblenothing.bandcamp.com/album/phonemenomicon (imo one of the best records in a long ass time, Scaruffi approved)
youtube.com/watch?v=uvDzaQOSZ3E
youtube.com/watch?v=KL_Bbyi3ub8
youtube.com/watch?v=qBruGdkcWAgSOrAwCDWvU
youtube.com/watch?v=S_F-0xymK5g
youtube.com/watch?v=2sNFw_IQE3M
youtube.com/watch?v=_1NaR4jr-8k
youtube.com/watch?v=OT7atti5GS8

Or at least check out this guy:
virtualdreamplaza.bandcamp.com
Who, IMO, has been making some of the absolute fucking best ambient music in recent memory.

I'm normally not one to diss Fisher, but that sounds kinda ignorant. I think electronic music has drastically changed over the past decade. The emergence of grime and vaporwave– who, imo, are the two foremost anti-capitalist genres out there atm, have changed the game forever.
Techno doesn't change a whole lot because it's a formula that just werks. It's always been just Funk/Disco stripped down to its core.

i agree. in old times art flourished through rich patrons. art cant blossom unless artists are free from the restrictions of capitalism.

Ah come on now. There's been plenty of amazing DIY music and art over the past 100 years. While I think it's shameful and the fault of capitalism that artists aren't treated or viewed with the respect that they were once given, meaningful and beautiful art will survive til the end of humanity itself. That belief is probably one of the only things that keeps me going.

i never said art and music are dead, just in a decline. thinks will bounce back sooner or later im sure.

What do you mean by decline anyway though? In quality? If so then in what ways? Do you mean just Popular Art or art in general? I know that modern classical music, while no longer getting the audience it once had, is supposedly thriving atm. The re-emergence of Jazz is also pretty encouraging– take even Kendrick Lamar, who imo has filled in a sorely missed artistic role in modern pop.

I should add, that while good music is still being made, there's never any clear innovation or break as we were used to experiencing every ten years or so. For example, listen to this release on Ascetic House(label similar to Posh Isolation mentioned earlier):
youtube.com/watch?v=8nQSRl8kMmk
While good, it only rehashes and distorts old electronic and dance music styles. The mixing makes it sound distant and dreamy, almost like the ghosts of someone's fevereshly bad experience on a cruise ship. Ironically the project is named after a cruise ship that got destroyed in an arson, killing 159 people on board. Anyhow, I wish Mark Fisher was alive so he could say something poignant about hauntology, ghosts and repetition of culture relating to this release, maybe drawing parrallels to the general human condition. Have his interview with Burial instead:
thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/burial_unedited-transcript

i could spend an hour listing all of the great music that was made between 2006 and 2012 but since then i would say the number of good musicians has declined to maybe an eighth of what it once was… musicians are more worried about making money at shows than making good music. i'm not saying its their fault, just that that's the stay i see the current music industry in. of course you can find exceptions, but i think the trend is there.

i should add that i'm mainly talking about more mainstream music. i dont follow underground music much.

That's probably because I misrepresented his views or wasn't clear enough, you should read his blog instead. k-punk.org Funny that you mention vaporwave though, it has been used as an example of capitalist realism, where culture is an ironic repetition of the past, and we live in an eternal ghostlike repetition of the present haunted by the past.
youtube.com/watch?v=g6UAKCU5vEs

Ah, that's fair. I think mainstream music has been pretty shitty recently too, with very few exceptions. One thing that's been encouraging though has been the increasing popularity of very experimental elements, which haven't really been seen in pop since the '80s.

I'll check it out, I've yet to really read much by him aside from Vampies.
That's certainly true, but I think Vaporwave really stands out for its explicit critique of that idea's prevalence in modern media as a whole. I honestly believe Vaporwave, the early stuff that is, is dialectical materialism in musical form. I could go on about it for hours, but I still think Vaporwave will be remembered as one of the most important musical movements in recent history. Were I smarter and better read, I'd write a very long essay on the rise of vaporwave/vhs/simpsonswave aesthetics.

What is a left criticism of art and architecture? Do you just mean essentially 'this opposes/doesn't promote my views' or do you think art creates material conditions somehow?

Art reflects and expresses our experiences of our material conditions

I think he makes a pretty good case here:

jacobinmag.com/2016/06/zaha-hadid-architecture-gentrification-design-housing-gehry-urbanism/

As someone who loves cinema I don't agree for shit. Cinema is stale. Hollywood big blockbustures are more interested in brand creation than anything else. Auteurs are basically all dead or went out of their way to shit on their legacy (see Godard). Indipendent movies are more interested to make a politic statement than advancing the medium. what will be considered in a few the decade the most influential director of this generation will be tarantino and this basically means that movie are a circle jerk and more about having fun than anything else. Tarantino ruined the medium with his bullshit.

I'm goin to bed, so I might be able to hook you up with some links tomorrow. But basically architectural theory has a lot to do with how design alters social space, from the interior space of the building itself to how it interacts with the other buildings and larger socio-aesthetic vibe as a whole. So questions are along the lines of

People like Peter B. Hutton, James Benning, Joshua Oppenheimer, Michael Haneke,Christian Marclay, and Ben Russell give film serious hope as a powerful medium. Pop film is dead and has been dead since the 90s. And, honestly, Shia Lebouf's All My Movies was fucking beautiful, I don't even care how big of a meme he is. It's an incredibly powerful and genuine document.

Well I'd certainly be interested in reading it.

While I agree that all of those are good they are in no way important. All of them except Haneke are for a niche only, and 2obscure4u type of directors. Secretarianism is shit in art too. Art need to speak to masses without being commercial. Plus they are not the hope of a new cinema. They are really really good and interesting but in no way important or influential. I don't get how these days movie fans are either "dude bro capeshit". Le art house film student or "Dude I want to be the new corman".

It's a bad time in human history to like paintings.

love it

modern architecture is great however fuck these attentionwhore "stars" who are "stars" only because they know a couple dumb mainstream journalists who hype them. fuck libeskind, who built the thing in the op and ruined a nice historical building in my state's capital, in particular. libeskind and gehry built like 3 actually decent structures in their entire careers and a shitload of ugly crap but nobody dares to tell they produced another concrete turd when they did so again, because they're supposedly "world renowned american architects" and already spent a couple millions tax money.

Commercial art is garbage. Look for amateurs/indie/classical/folk/traditional music

Modernism is good because it's a culture spawned by everyone. Everyone can relate to it, there are no divisions.

You're just objectively wrong. All the directors you named are the definition of being pretentious and completely misunderstood the entire point of cinema.

POST
BRUTALISM
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That third one is almost Gigerian. An erotic tinge ran through me when I opened the thumbnail.

I unironically enjoy brutalism for some reason

skoplje was beautiful before they ruined it with neoclassical garbage

Only appeals to 14 year old edgelords

t. pleb or neoclassical fag.
Bet you think this LARPing is any better

...

This style's really grown on me over the years. I think it's because I've been conditioned into a positive association with cardboard boxes since Amazon.

t. EVROPA INVICTA shit wearing LARPer

Modern art and architecture suffer from the same faults as scientism. Their rejection of superior native and classical ideas makes them ugly and breeds a generation of people who value science more than nature.

The first thing any communist government should do is tear down every example of modern architecture and rebuilt them in a continental style.

the reified institution of art as something separate from everyday life and the political economy is definitely reactionary. Art as a separate reified sphere can only devaluate life. We have to remember the role modern art plays in money laundering and reject the spectacular pretentions of celebrity artists. Modern hi tech architecture can't be separated from its political context, it should be understood as a continuation of stalinist and fascist megaproyects, an inherently authoritarian and anti democratic form. Santiago Calatrava's hypermodern complex in Valencia was a product of the neoliberal age, a display of illusory prosperity with zero practical utility. the shells of the future lie empty, full of leaks and requiring millions of dollars of maintenance per year. Modern architecture is also used by authoritarian regimes aiming for legitimacy. Celebrity architects flock to Dubai, Qatar and Saudi to provide a cover of gleaming 'progressive' modernity for what are essentially medieval theocracies. In a way, the philistines are somewhat more reasonable than the fetishists of culture.

good post

I don't see a problem with having a cool squiggly metal statue outside your building. You'd have to be some kind of sperg to look at that and go "ugh, why can't contemporary artists replicate the stylings of the old masters like Michelangelo and Myron?"

I, too, wake up every day and wish I lived in the Divine Cybermancy.

'Modern Art' reached its zenith in the early 20th century, with the futurists the surrealists and the dadaists. Since then, it has descended into just another reified spectacle, no different from the spectacles of politics, videogames, celebrity gossip or pornography. opium for the educated middle classes, cultural capital for the bourgeoisie and the state. there is hardly anything new under the sun. The only art left to us is the revolutionary abolition of the society that has made art impossible.

I absolutely love scandinavian minimalism.