imomus | The New York Times discovers postmodernism

The New York Times discovers postmodernism

Mere months after it discovered rockism, the New York Times has mapped another fixture of our era: postmodernism. What's more, the venerable newspaper has realised that Japan is a bit further along with this stuff than America is. Luckily they're not too sore about that.

On Sunday, the New York Times magazine ran a generous Japan special which included a long piece on Mr Superflat himself, Takashi Murakami. I was amazed to learn that, despite selling individual works for half a million dollars, Murakami ("the son of a taxi driver and a housewife") still owns very little, and lives like a pauper.

"The Kaikai Kiki factory complex," reports the Times, "is situated in a drab suburban district an hour from central Tokyo. One of the little buildings, without toilet or bath, is Murakami's home, in which a sleeping bag serves as a bed. Next to the shed that houses Murakami is an even smaller one that houses potted cactuses. Hybridizing cactus from seed is Murakami's hobby, one for which he has little time. Apparently he has no time for romantic or family attachments, either. ''He makes art and sleeps,'' said Dana Friis-Hansen, executive director of the Austin Museum of Art in Texas and co-curator of a 1998 Murakami exhibition at Bard College in New York. ''Some curators are really frustrated, because he'll ask for and usually get the right to sleep in the gallery while he is setting up. He'll bring assistants and sleeping bags, and they'll cook noodles there.""

The article basically took the same line I do regarding Japanese postmodernism: that since Japan is currently the most postmodern country, it's Japan we should watch for the first signs of the thing that comes after postmodernism. Here are three statements from Arthur Lubow's article which present basic postmodern scenarios, and propose Japan as just a wee bit further along with them than the West:

1. "The grab-bag appropriation, inexact simulation and accelerated speed that characterize this process no longer appear peculiarly Japanese. They feel now. We live in an age when distinctions are arbitrary, originality is devalued, hierarchies are discredited and authenticity seems meaningless."

2. "In the same way, there is no pecking order in Japanese tradition whereby an original outranks a well-made copy or a work of art in a gallery is more precious than a piece of merchandise in a shop. The time-honored Japanese worldview, in other words, closely resembles the postmodern one, in which sensations and images rain down incessantly and you have no choice but to take it all in as it comes."

3. "It may be that Americans feel they understand Murakami without conducting research because he is reacting to a hyperstimulated and decontextualized Japan that looks a lot like their own society. For unique historical reasons, the Japanese arrived earlier at an ahistorical worldview."

I also liked Murakami's comment on Andy Warhol. ''My concept is, anytime we do the honest thing, we get the win,'' Murakami said. ''People find it very difficult to find their honest desire. Andy Warhol did that. I love his diary: pay the driver two weeks, the coffee is too sweet, the weather is cold. It's a life. Warhol is a master artist for me because he was a really honest person.''

In the article we see Murakami fretting about transport costs (he's staging a show at the Japan Society) in much the same honest and down-to-earth (or perhaps I should say "sublunary and de-transcendentalised"?) way he did in the catalogue Summon Monsters? Open the Door? Heal? Or Die?, which instead of theory has meticulously detailed essays on how to pack and ship art, how to run an office, and so on. A bit like early Scritti Politti sleeves, which used to lay out printing and pressing costs so that new bands could follow suit with a realistic—and materialist—outlook.

Nice to see Tylor Brulé plugging Composite magazine in the same issue of the NYT mag:

"Composite magazine was founded by Masanobu Sugatsuke in 1992, during the golden age of style publishing," writes Brulé. "With a laissez-faire approach to deadlines, it suspended publication for a period, but now it's back with a new design and a more mature editorial slant. A recent issue on Berlin chronicled the city's creative community, with great attention to real estate. (As Berlin has really cheap rents, the Japanese writers were not without a touch of envy.) Publishing bimonthly, Composite fills a niche left vacant by The Face, plus you can be over 25 and find yourself reflected in its pages."

The new issue of Composite has features on "Body in Mode" and "Life With Vegetable". So that's how those over-25s stay looking so fresh: by dancing and chowing down (all gathered around a big table) on broccoli!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's interesting that they call postmodernism an "ahistorical" world view, rather than an ultrahistoricized one. As I understand it, the avant garde mode of modernism was all about tearing down the old forms to find new ones of universal utility unfettered by tradition. The postmodern is all about loading those specific, historically-situated forms into the supercollider.

Yes, I think "asynchronous" would be a better word than "ahistorical". "All existing equally and simultaneously," as BT magazine put it in its Murakami article. Because of course pomo is a nono without retro, that we all know know.

Je suis d'accord! Exactement!

Instead of What Would Jesus Do--What Would Foucault Say?

> thing that comes after postmodernism
Which surely demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what postmodernism is?

I'm not convinced that because Japan is the world's most postmodern society we should be watching it to find out what comes next. That form of future-guessing hasn't historically been very fruitful (ie extrapolating on the most advanced form of modernity leads you to predict nuclear-powered cars or whatever). What comes next won't be so predictable. Actually, what comes next is probably already happening somewhere, we just haven't yet realised its significance. After all, if anything we've moved in to late postmodernism by now. Postmodernism as a term made its first appearance way back in 1926 (Bernard Iddings Bell "Postmodernism and Other Essays"). Postmodernism in art and literature had its heyday in the 1960s - a long time ago now.

I often use the analogy of Marx and Engels in Manchester. Britain was the most advanced capitalist country, and they went there to study it and prepare a critique which would lead to something else. But of course Marx's project was to speed the next stage, to precipitate and galvanize it. He was very proactive: "historians have only interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it".

Sure, what comes next is probably already happening somewhere. And I nominate the Slow Life thing in Japan. I think it's a nice model of a burned-out consumer society continuing with some postmodernist themes (retro, for instance, and the populist abolition of high and low) but abandoning the conspicuous consumption model. It may not end up being called "Slow Life", but this basic idea is the shape of "the next thing".

I don't know enough about slow life to comment, but my own guess about what comes after postmodernism is that parallel worlds will become increasingly important and will perhaps supplant the "real world" as a central emotional locus of our lives. Gaming might be some kind of model here:

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/31/real-and-virtual-weapons/#comments

Of course, I've just fallen foul of my own criticism of you ie extrapolating from the latest "newest thing". Still, if enlightenment/modernism was about objectivity, pomo about relativity, then then the next thing may well be "deep subjectivity" (ie immersing oneself in virtual worlds).

Well, I'm actually arguing here for the opposite of that. I think reality will become more and more important. Or perhaps there will be a mutual valorisation going on between the real world and virtual worlds. We will be both more subjective/virtual-oriented and more objective/real-oriented.

Look at Murakami: he's creating these synthetic manga worlds which look hermetically sealed, if not "barricaded away" from the real world (like the hikikomori / otaku he talks so much about). But he's also very keen on Warhol's emphasis on paying the taxi driver, noticing that the weather is cold and the coffee is sweet. Or on making a book which tells people how to run an office or ship packages. This is admirably materialist of him. Materialism (in the Marxist sense) is not the unsustainable, fantasy-driven accumulation of material goods, but a responsible and realistic overview of resources and their management. Ecology and economy are finally the same thing.

Isn't that emphasis on materialism a ort of backdoor platonism, though? The difference between virtual worlds and the "real" world is not really levels of "realness" (all social worlds are equally constructed), but the fact that virtual worlds have so far been only impoverished, stylised and simplified forms of the real world. But that may be set to change. If we can lead just as rich an existence in a parallel world, then I'd say all that's happened is our social world has simply changed or evolved, and not that it has become less "real". Ultimately, buying virtual islands is no different to buying stocks and shares.

The difference between virtual worlds and the "real" world is not really levels of "realness" (all social worlds are equally constructed)...

I have to stop you there to say that although social worlds are constructed, the real world is bigger than social worlds. You can't equate "the real world" and "constructed social worlds". There is more than what humans make in the universe. Nature is still beyond our control, and beyond our power to construct. We can't "construct" more oil when the oil runs out, or "construct" a new polar ice cap or a new Gulf Stream. This is materialism, not Platonism.

Agreed. But in post-industrial, consumerist societies where no one is starving to death, our interaction with the real, non-human, non-social world becomes rather abstracted. I want an ipod, but for a social reason. In a world in which ipods didn't exist, I'd probably be just as happy with a walkman. The objects of our consumerist desire are really floating signifiers, they are social tokens. Now let's imagine a post-consumerist society where the social tokens were not primarily industrially created physical objects, but virtual objects...

If one is to watch Japan for clues as to what the Next Big Thing is, I think it's only useful to the extent that you monitor their discontents and failures as well as their successes.

Personally I think it's a bit boring and conservative to assume that everything always balances out in the end: "Well, there are good points and bad points... like with everything..." That sort of thinking leaves us immobilised. I'm interested in thinking that takes me somewhere. "It's better there" may not be true, but it's dynamic rather than static. It makes me want to get up and go there. It's morale-boosting. And it can initiate virtuous circles and self-fulfilling prophecies. "The philosophers have only interpreted history -- the point, however, is to change it."

Oh, I'm definitely not taking that in a Marxy kind of direction. The polemics on both sides kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Rather, if there is to be a fundamental shift or development in the pomo world view, there has to be some sort of impetus, even if it's simply boredom with the current state of things.

People started shifting away from modernism when they realized that there was more to the way things worked than its philosophies described, after all.

Likewise, whatever comes after postmodernism is necessarily going to be informed by its discontents as well as its critiques of modernism.

Interestingly enough, a friend of mine had a project for a design class where he was supposed to guess what came after pomo and create a magazine cover that was informed by this sensibility. I thought about it for a while, and concluded that the Slow Life movement seems to be hinting at it, though my line of reasoning was different.

I thought: Okay, modernism and postmodernism are taking opposite stances on the metanarrative, so anything fundamentally different from this needs to transcend this quarrel. Since metanarratives describe means to an end, be it salvation, a utopian society, the perfection of human knowledge, the next big thing could possibly get around this by emphasizing process over result. So "Slow Life" fits the bill.

Interesting!

You can pick out a simple recurring theme in this entry.

Murakami calls his version of postmodern "superflat".
Murakami lives simply, with no attachments.
Murakami lives in much the same style as his assistants, collectively.
Postmodernism breaks down hierarchies.
Murakami thinks Andy Warhol is good because he's honest.
Postmodernism discredits "authenticity".
Honesty and authenticity are not the same thing, apparently.
Rather than mystifying or theorising art, Murakami talks and writes about it in a very practical and down-to-earth way.
This resembles the Marxism of early Scritti Politti, who printed production costs on their records.
Composite magazine shares this down-to-earth approach: their recent issue on Berlin printed exact rents of all the people it interviewed and asked them for practical tips.
(Passing on to the comments section): Slow Life posited as possible "next thing".
Momus emphasizes that there can be postmodernism without consumer society.
In other words, there can be materialism that is not materialistic.
In fact, this non-materialistic version is the only plausible future for materialism.
It would also be nice if the "Slow Life" future retained pomo's anti-hierarchical emphasis.

So perhaps we could say that what distinguishes "early" from "late" postmodernism is the different attitude to consumerism. Early = positive (or at least ambivalent), late = negative (or somewhat detached).

Personally, I date the pomo period as beginning in 1956 with an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery called "This Is Tomorrow" (Paolozzi, Hamilton, the Smithsons, Reyner Banham...) This exhibition presented what Richard Hamilton calls "an ironism of affirmation" towards the finned cars, rock and roll, ideal homes and appliances then appearing in the US. It both celebrated and mocked them. Late pomo will increasingly renounce them. In Japan there's already a slogan among the young furitas (people who just work enough at part-time jobs to live, then enjoy their free time): "Nani-mo hoshii mono-ga nai" (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/features/edu2004/ek20040826ks.htm) -- there's nothing to want.

"Nani-mo hoshii mono-ga nai" -- there's nothing to want.

Relative social status?

Striking photography as always! Is the lady having a bad hair day, do you think? ~chuckles~

More Japan in the NYTimes today, this time on the subject of Host Clubs: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/international/asia/05tokyo.html?8hpib

There seem to be a few contradictions in the article. The one that was most apparent to me: "originality is devalued"--that is Derridean, but also "ahistorical" (as someone mentioned before), which is anti-Foucault. The journalist seems to be suggesting Japan (which is a place I have never visited) is a no hors de texte country. That seems like a rather Western interpretation.

For communities that are after postmodernism: the most evidence I see of this is poetry discourses. 'Post-postmodern' (a term I've heard before around here too) poets already exist. The language poets were perhaps the most 'cutting-edge' of the postmodern poets. They influenced a lot of what is in experimental poetry journals today.

Have you ever read Anne Carson? She's a poet that I and a friend of mine adore. She takes forms from Borges (who I know you like), Aristotle, Stein, and others. If you haven't read any of her work, I'd recommend Men in the Off Hours first.

Carson's writing is beautiful. I prefer The Autobiography of Red for it's layerings and conflations, but I think that her context and metatextual manuvering is always the icing on the cake of her incredible language. I haven't read Men in the Off Hours, but I will now.

A.

One of my favourite parts in The Autobiography of Red is the long syllogism. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but enjoyable nevertheless. What is your favourite part?

I've only read the two works you've mentioned (I approached her translations of Sappho and cringed), plus a few of her essays, and though The Autobiography of Red is beautiful, I prefer Men in the Off Hours. Unlike the former, the latter is pure poetry. It's more flexible in terms of form. Its dramatis personae is greater and more exciting. In one poem you have Woolf and Thucydides preparing a film script and talking about war. In another poem, you have Artaud on Artaud's terms, going through his death. One of my favourite poems in that collection is "Irony is not Enough: Essay on my Life as Catherine Deneuve." It tracks a) Deneuve in an unseen bit in Les Voleurs, b) Deneuve as Carson (a prof), and c) Deneuve as Carson as Sappho, who is having an affair with a student.

Though Carson plays a lot with other people's forms, I am intensely interested in getting my hands on her Short Talks collection of poetry, which is currently out of print and a collection of her more grass-roots innovation of the 'short talk.' I have excerpts from it in my anthology for Can Lit class. Here's an excerpt I enjoy:

Short Talk on the Total Collection
From childhood he dreamed of being able to keep with him all the objects in the world lined up on his shelves and bookcases. He denied lack, oblivion or even the likelihood of a missing piece. Order streamed from Noah in blue triangles and as the pure fury of his classifications rose around him, engulfing his life they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them.

And another:

Short Talk on Walking Backward
My mother taught me never to walk backward. That is how the dead walk, she said. I don't know where she got this idea; perhaps from a bad translation. The dead do not walk backward, but they do walk behind us. They long for us to turn around and look at them with love. They are victims of love, many of them.

My favorite is section III: Rhinestones. I enjoy it becuase of the way she talks about Geryon under the fruit bowl: "The fruit bowl was very still...The fruit bowl paused...Is Geryon Sulking again?/said the baby-sitter entering the kitchen. No said the fruitbowl." There's something I enjoy about the absurdity of the situation. Maybe it's too Meg Ryan, but I really enjoy it, maybe because I often put things on my head that belong on the table. I also enjoy the way the mood shifts, revealing what every child knows is the uselessness of the baby-sitter against any true childhood enemy. I felt her language worked best in the childhood section, more so than as he matures.

I've also read sections of Glass, Irony, and God, but haven't ever finished it. It wasn't as compelling to me at the time, after I'd just finished Autobiography since they're so dissimilar, though Autobiography seems to be the anamoly.

I have a hardback copy of her Sappho translations, which is a beautiful book, but a difficult, if noble, task to tackle. I enjoy the way she talks about the margins in the introduction, and appreciate her nod to the incompleteness of the not only of the collection, but of the poems themselves (a rare acknowledgment from Sapphic translators I've encountered), but without the Greek background to really appreciate the blurred interstices where the text fails and the imagination may run rampant with possibilities the experiment fell short for me. My favorite translation of Sappho is Mary Barnard's (http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/1058.html) from the UC Press. I found it when I was looking for the Idylls of Theocritus, possibly from City Lights on a trip to the City.

Those excerpts are tempting. They have the same practiced candidness that I find so endearing and tempting about her work in general. Not rehearsed, but thoughtful, considered, as if someone were speaking honestly, but took the time to think before she spoke. You've piqued my interest.

I don't know if you've heard of ABEbooks.com, or if you buy books over the internet, but there seem to be a few copies (http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Anne+Carson&y=0&tn=Short+Talks&x=0) of Short Talks lying around if you're really interested.

Also, do you mind if I friend you? I don't say much on this journal, but I do occasionally speak eloquently on this one (http://www.strangejournal.com), but I do use livejournal to keep tabs on everyone else, and you seem like someone worth keeping track of.

Adam

Sure; you can add me, Adam.

Oh yeah, ok: they put Short Talks back on the market in 2003. Thanks for the link.

Yeah, I think that's what turned me off about the translations as well: too many blanks. She says we have to use our imagination and in at least one poem I know of, it was just brackets down a page and one word. That's kind of too sparse for me. Why not just Mary Swann it and put away the formalist ethos for a little? I mean, she is Anne Carson.

It's funny: this tension between 'rehearsed' poetry and more 'natural' poetry. I think I've read so much 'natural' poetry (blame it on the confessionalists and mid-century poets) that I would rather read language poetry. Poetry is the only medium in which you can really use language. Carson manages to mix genres, but an average novelist probably would not.

(I don't agree with Cohen and deem poetry a 'verdict.' Finnegan's Wake, for example, I don't consider poetry. Nor Ulysses. To the Lighthouse, however, is perhaps another story. Woolf influenced Carson too. Joyce influenced poets like Bernstein, but Joyce himself was not a poet, though he did release collections of poetry.)

Profound stuff, I'm sure. One thing I have to bring you up on though, Momus, regarding your piece on rockism: corporate/design people using the word "funky" in that way. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it makes them ill.

yeah, but how does all of this square up with what you were telling us a while back???
http://imomus.com/thought110100.html

I was reading your superflat TotD last night after doing some superficial iresearch on Murakami after having read the very Times article you quote here, trying to find an online copy of Superflat in English. Woe is me and my skills of underestimation. I came across your essay, and was really blown away at your criticism of Christian transcendentalism and your use of Murakami's superflat in your critique of said non-sublunary appreciation. Is the Murakami interview with BT magazine you quote available online somewhere? Or did you manually transcribe that yourself? I looked, but I couldn't find it. I'd be interested to read the interview in its entirety, if it's available.

And thanks for turning me on to a place in livejournal not devoid of intelligence or awareness.

Adam

Thanks, Adam!

Is the Murakami interview with BT magazine you quote available online somewhere? Or did you manually transcribe that yourself?

Yes, I translated and transcribed it with the help of a Japanese friend. As far as I know it's not online in English.

Would you be willing to send me that? I'm writing an article on contemporary american animation (tenatively titled How the Simpsons Ruined American Animation) and I'm in the research phase of it right now, and I'm trying to come to grips with the way that the Japanese view media, and have recently been struggling to articulate a hierarchy of anime, and this whole superflat thing, while old hat to you, has been a sort of revelation to me. I don't feel comfortable with the whole thing yet, but your translation might be a real help to me. If you're not comfortable with the idea, I understand completely, but if you are that would be awesome. You would, of course, be duly credited in the bibliography, though I'm sure for someone of your staggering stature that sort of temptation of pseudo-academic noteriety has long since lost it's allure. Ah well, I shall have to find other pots of honey.

Adam

Here's the manifesto Murakami wrote for the book Super Flat (http://www.sweatyfrog.com/superflat.html):

"The Super Flat Manifesto

The world of the future might be like Japan is today -- super flat.

Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional. It is particularily apparent in the arts that this sensibility has been flowing steadily beneath the surface of Japanese history. Today, the sensibility is most present in Japanese games and anime, which have become powerful parts of world culture. One way to imagine super flatness is to think of the moment when, in creating a desktop graphic for your computer, you merge a number of distinct layers into one. Though it is not a terribly clear example, the feeling I get is a sense of reality that is very nearly a physical sensation. The reason that I have lined up both the high and the low of Japanese art in this book is to convey this feeling. I would like you, the reader, to experience the moment when the layers of Japanese culture, such as pop, erotic pop, otaku, and H.I.S.ism, fuse into one. [H.I.S. is a discount ticket agency in Japan. By lowering the price of travel abroad, the company is having a profound effect on the relationship between Japan and the West.]

Where is our reality?

This book hopes to reconsider 'super flatness', the sensibility that has contributed to and continues to contribute to the construction of Japanese culture as a worldview, and show that it is an original concept that links the past with the present and the future. During the modern period, as Japan has been Westernised, how has this 'super flat' sensibility metamorphosed? If that can be grasped clearly, then our stance today will come into focus.

In this quest, the current progressive of the real in Japan runs throughout. We might be able to find an answer to our search for a concept about our lives. 'Super flatness' is an original concept of Japanese who have been completely Westernized.

Within this concept seeds for the future have been sown. Let's search the future to find them. 'Super flatness' is the stage to the future."

He was more articulate in the BT interview, but I don't have a transcript of the whole thing, just the bits I used in my essay.

I would first like to apologize for not being more knowledgeable about the ideas of post-modernism. As per Superflatness, is this a prescription for how a society should evolve? Or are you saying this is the inevitable path of post-industrialized nation-states? I'm confused by this. Thanks. I really enjoy your journal.

you have excellent taste in fine japanese women.

And I nominate the Slow Life thing in Japan. I think it's a nice model of a burned-out consumer society continuing with some postmodernist themes (retro, for instance, and the populist abolition of high and low) but abandoning the conspicuous consumption model.

I agree, I think, somewhat, at least in as far as I think people will largely start turning towards the aescetic (for lack of a better word) as the 20th century was full of movements, "a century of isms" as somebody called it.

Momus: Interesting post. I also like the text wrap you have been doing as of late. May I humbly suggest that you use a "hspace=5" within your "img" tags to give the text a little breathing room, so it isn't flush against the images. See, e.g. here (http://www.newbie.org/html/lesson04.html). Greetings from Brooklyn!

Thanks for the tip! Didn't know that one.

It seems that the thing that has come after postmodernism in Japan is a return to nationalism. The same thing has/is happening in the United States too.

For once the People's Repubic of China are trend setters!

Is the woman with the hair a picture that was in the article or something that you found that you felt fit with the subject. Just curious, is it a postmodern picture?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The New York Times discovers postmodernism

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