|
| Lyndal
Walker Then why now(ism) now, then? September 1996 |
||
Abraham Cowley in John Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" "Madame, I am not thinking, I am excited!" Gustave Courbet in John Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" |
||
 Lyndal Walker, 1990s shared household living room, 1996 |
The current state of Nowism is elusive by its
very nature in that it cannot be contemporaneously
held or examined, but only be retrospectively
understood (through post-interestingism) as what was
now. For the nowist, interest lies only in the now . . . all that follows is post-interesting. The nowist (cuspist) straddles the razors edge of the culture, which is a difficult and temporary place to be. He relies on inside information and cultural soothsaying. Rewards for attaining nowism range from the congratulatory wink to entree into the world of the interesting whilst failure may see the proto-nowist ostracised, lampooned, lagging. Nowism can be seen as the state of the objective occuring now, the next occuring now and so on.
"It's like sartori or something. It was so quick bit I'll never forget the noise . . . Jeez, and that was it. All power, training even instinct was worthless, and it's got nothing to do with architecture! You are not all there, just part of you . . . and then you are gone."1 Predicting what will be now involves solipsism and miscalculation. Once predicted, that which would be now may no longer be, for culture winds a mysterious path, one too often washed out by freak storms etc. That retro can be seen as now may appear to make prediction easier, but that which is retro grates with even the most liberal nowist definition. Retro is, if nothing else, post-interesting. Redundance is a part of every (new or old) product, fad, scene or idea, so that nostalgia and significance is pre-arranged and immediate. Nowism, and its necessary successor, post-interestingism result in an exhilirating, disorienting void where every thing has a shot at significance. Values are homogenised; nothing is inherently worth anything; it is either now, or it is not. Michael Delany and Geoffrey Heaton Nees Endnotes |
|
© The
artist, writers and |
||
