Lecture 8 - Jean Baudrillard and Postmodernism.

Hyperreality theory.
1960s

production growth
industries
marketing & communism

Bladerunner 1982 - idea of simulacra
MATRIX
What is real?
Reality is turned into blank white canvas filled with constructions

Baudrillard
- early writings grounded in Marxism
Labour 
> shaping the environment through industry
Became removed or alienated from the condition.

Universal condition of human experience

Products have 'use value'
- can become commodities
these have 'exchange value'

money...
- abstraction of 'use value'
Relationship to the world becomes indirect.

Directly engaging with & transforming the world around you.
Not possible under capitalism
>said marx.


A mans work becomes an object.
Exchange of labour for production disconnects the labourer from the product.

- weighing products / commodities against all others, and the quantity of money we can exchange them for.
Industrialisation would make production much more effective.
Henry Ford 
> automated production line 1913
everyone contributes one element of production along the line.

Post war
Manufacturing boom
assembly line becomes method of production for all commodity items.

John Berger
Publicity as a system proposes we change ourselves an our lives by buying things.
translating words into a language 'people' understand.
Thing statement to human statements.

mpg - high - thrifty
        -  low - Advertise above thrifty, to those money isn't an issue. thrill seekers etc.

Baudrillard
Advertising codes products
Fitting objects into series
they are then related to individual consumers
Focus Groups. 
- Basing advertising upon the information found out from a group of consumers.

Array of advertising messages out there make up a language
needs cohere with product...

Shop Environments 
suggest Abundance - affluence
Surplus!
people are all made to desire in the same way
agreement of a given language system

Language . signification of meaning

Tube station
- adverts randomly next to each other (like montage)

cultural condition of hyperreality


'desert of the real' 

Twin Towers. 
Immune to their surroundings - appear so clearly within the vast city scape.

Media representations affecting & shaping social events.
suggesting that spectacular endings in films etc were sort of the basis for 9/11

post modernity is a game with the leftovers of what has been destroyed
> history has stopped
>No meaning
Material progress has come to an end
American psycho - personification of current social stance.
Patrick Bateman.

Post Modernism

Critics say we live in a post modern society/era.
Almost a belief that everything has been done before.
"ironic"

Modernism
-Born out of optimism, sense of positivity, aspiration.
ART & DESIGN BUILDING A UTOPIAN WORLD.
Le Corbusier.


Modernist practice.
Experimental, innovative, individualism, progress, originality, purity.
Postmodern Condition.
Exhaustion, pluralism, pessimism, disillusionment, idea of absolute knowledge.

Modernism was a celebration or expression of new technologies etc.
Post modernism is a response or reaction to this.
Belief that the modern world will ultimately self destruct.
1917 - German Pannwitz spoke of 'nihilistic, post modern men'
1964 - Leslie Fielder described a 'Post' culture, elitist view.
Postmodernism gathers pace in the 1960s.
Dominant in the 1980s and 90s --- has become tired over recent years.
(jameson) 'late capitalism'
After modernism, contra modernism, stylistic ecclecticism.

Rap and hip hop could be seen as postmodern...
'global village' globalization of everything.

Charles Jencks. 1515 July, 1972, 3 : 32  demolition of Pruitt.
Pruitt epitomises the failings of Modernist architecture.

questions conventions (those set by modernism particularly)
Utopian and technological determinism of modernism have failed.
Postmodern aesthetic is about individualism and difference.
-only rule in postmodernism is that there are no rules.
-celebrates the Kitsch

Park Hill flats - Sheffield. 1960s.
became a slum, horrible!  yet still a listed building.
AT & T building
Philip Johnson - 1982 - modernist style.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
James Stirling- neue staffisgalerie.  selfridges - birmingham
Robinson Library - downing college - 1992 reaction to modernism

J-F LYOTARD
-incredulity towards metanarratives
-total belief system - vision of world showing new strategy
-visions of elites imposing ideas become ideology as it won't work.
Crisis in confidence...undermining of structures of the past.

Postmodern aesthetic
one of complexity and chaos. -  Roy Lichtenstein (1965) attacks seriousness.
High art/low art divide crumbles.

LAS VEGAS
the ultimate postmodern city.
postmodern dystopia - loss of order and self
BLADERUNNER...


Andy Warhol , elevation to celebrity
attack on artist as superior, leader.
as Warhol said, he didn't know anything about art.
yet his work hangs in galleries.


Jackson Pollock.
Rejection of the values of art.
David Shrigley
'Art lovers'

PIERO MANZONI-'artists shit'
taking the piss out of those so wrapped up in art they think canning poo is a good idea.

NEW DEPTHLESSNESS
waning of effort. face value.
Culture of retro styles. Never new or innovative.

"advertising is the greatest artform of the 20th century" Mcluhan


MEMPHIS group.
Sotsass
founded 1981
adbusters - design anarchy. 


an inconclusion...
-a vague disputed term
-attitude of questioning conventions
-space for 'new voices'
-rejection of technological determinism