Frieze Magazine | Lauren Cornell | Down the Line
The last 20 years have seen revolutions in technology that have transformed our lives. How have art and its institutions reacted?
In the Nostalgia District
Lauren Cornell is executive director of Rhizome and adjunct curator at the New Museum, New York, USA.
The 16 May 2011 issue of The New Yorker featured a cartoon titled ‘In the Nostalgia District’. It depicts a row of run-down buildings. Their facades read: ‘Joe’s FIX-IT shop’, ‘Photo Developing’, ‘Stationery Supplies’, ‘ACME Travel Agency’ and ‘Kwik Konnect Internet Cafe’, all businesses that have been replaced by online services. Yet their storefronts remain: whiplashed by a world that’s changed around them, sudden relics, out-of-sync but resolute. It struck me that there’s a connection between the ‘Nostalgia District’ and what we might call the ‘art district’, for both have experienced seismic technological change and have been reticent or slow to respond.
Essential reading! The follow-up piece by Kazys Varnelis, not so much.