The roads of rage and ruin: contemporary art and its publics after the global

Abstract

This essay will consider the possibilities for contemporary art and culture in the current age of anger, the post-public condition, the historical phase of deglobalization, and the demise of the international artworld and contemporary art as we knew it. First of all, I will outline how contemporary art came to be structurally and historically after 1989, and how this was aligned with the central notion and economy of globalization itself. In the second half, I will describe how this historical formation is changing, and arguably disappearing, and consider what can and will replace it. I will do so through a reading of Walter Mignolo’s outline of five options for the future: decoloniality, rewesternization, reorientation of the Left, dewesternization, and spiritual reawakening. To these, I will then add and consider a sixth option: neo-fascism, drawing upon the work of Rastko Močnik, which also provides a road map for the present and future.