The Paramodern Condition: Art and Culture after Postmodernism
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25 Sep
2024
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Aesthetics, Criticism and Theory (ACT)
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Girish Shahane
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Image: Still from the film Joker (2019). Image courtesy of Warner Bros
While it is widely recognized that the characteristic features of postmodernism – self-aware irony, moral relativism and a mistrust of grand narratives – no longer apply to culture today, there is no consensus on what has taken their place. In this lecture, Girish Shahane provides an account of the post-postmodern condition using the descriptor ‘paramodernism’ to encapsulate salient features of recent geopolitical and artistic developments. Starting with concise histories of modernism and postmodernism, the lecture goes on to define how the paramodern era differs from its predecessors, focusing on personal performativity, political paranoia, and the weakening of barriers between private and public spheres in the age of social media. It considers previous attempts at defining a successor to postmodernism, notably digimodernism and metamodernism, summarising the insights provided by these theoretical models as well as their limitations. The lecture examines a wide range of fields including visual arts practices, curatorial strategies, popular cinema and literature.
Free In-person Lecture with Live Streaming on ZOOM.
P.S: The Zoom link to join the lecture will be shared 24 hours prior to the talk.
Duration -
September 25, 2024
Timing: Tea: 6:00 PM Lecture: 6:30 - 8:00 pm IST
Registrations Closed
Girish Shahane
Girish Shahane is an independent writer and curator based in Mumbai. He has degrees in English literature from Elphinstone College, Bombay University, and Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He was editor and later consulting editor of Art India magazine. He has been a columnist for Time Out magazine, DNA newspaper Yahoo India, Scroll.in and Mint Lounge. He was Director of the Skoda Prize for Indian Contemporary Art from 2011 to 2014, Artistic Director of Art Chennai 2014, and Artistic Director of the India Art Fair 2015. Recent exhibitions curated by him include Conjunction of the Spheres (Delhi, 2023), Magic Markers (Delhi 2023), The Rusi House Anthology (Mumbai 2023) and A Bold Step Sideways (Delhi 2024).