<nettime> Rejecting Prada is about art, not design

[calin@euronet.nl]

I recently heard a journalist say: "we are  --  by definition  --  AGAINST". 
I think that this type of statement applies to art as well.

Therefore whenever art was confined in narcissistic attitudes of self-
contemplation (lately in the 80s), it has been necessary to act AGAINST that; 
and looking over to what was appealing to the masses  --  design products, 
advertisement, club culture  --  packaging in a word, was thought to be a 
solution.

Now, when every event of any social surface is closing with a VJ/DJ party, and 
when art events are quite a lot about lounging, fashion parades and food 
catering  --  it is time to be AGAINST, de nouveau. 

The ideological radicalism claimed by those consumer-disguised events is not 
enough to make them stay, precisely because this type of critique didn't manage 
to do much more than blurr further the lines between free creativity and 
commercially enrolled promotion. Even if just for clearing the air, art should 
be AGAINST. 

And that's not gonna happen if we are still trying to learn from the Pradas. We 
are in 2002, remember? Learning from brands is passe, it's from the previous 
century. Even some designers realised that, playing down their product oriented 
identity and focusing more on the performance character of their work, on its 
autonomy. 

Problem with the students is  --  in deed  --  that they find it more 
appealing to dive into technological issues (an area unanimously supported by 
the society which they learn to serve), than to do autonomous research, which 
requires a type of knoledge that low-to-high education seems to avoid 
systematically  --  history, theory, general cultural information.

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