Saturday, June 11, 2005
Gatekeeper Blues
It should be said that Paul Virilio's Rothko citation isn't in any way positive. I have a sense that Virilio would champion Ostriker. He'd likely consider more experimental contemporary writers wallowers in their own cultural destruction. PV considers the move away from "representative art" as anti-human, or "pitiless". He equates contemporary art with terrorism, & ridiculously enough- practitioners of "the aesthetics of Auschwitz". He parellels extreme sports, extreme science (eugenics, cloning, etc.) & contemporary art as equal limitless partners in ritual cultural suicide.
He doesn't talk much about poetry, save his ahistorical utilization of quotes from Marinetti & Mayakovsky. Virilio concentrates primarily on the visual, w/ a little performance art accent. But who knows? Maybe he suffers from something similar to the Ostriker Syndrome. He may hate contemporary visual experimentalists, but have the interdisciplinary disconnect to embrace experimental writers. Paul & Alicia- get well soon.
- Frank Sherlock
He doesn't talk much about poetry, save his ahistorical utilization of quotes from Marinetti & Mayakovsky. Virilio concentrates primarily on the visual, w/ a little performance art accent. But who knows? Maybe he suffers from something similar to the Ostriker Syndrome. He may hate contemporary visual experimentalists, but have the interdisciplinary disconnect to embrace experimental writers. Paul & Alicia- get well soon.
- Frank Sherlock