Quirkiness of the postmodern museum tour
What is the art telling us?
‘Quirky’, per Merriam-Webster is:
having many quirks : unusual in especially an interesting or appealing way a quirky sense of humor quirky ideas/behavior a quirky and creative artist
That’s the word that sums up the postmodern experience. Think of Disneyland, TV reports.
‘Today a brave firefighter saved a cute hamster from a fire’
‘Movies made in our country are more and more inclusive’.
Also museum tours, ‘local’ cafes. Workplaces.
Startup culture yay! Flexible working hours, our startup is not like all others.
How does it feel:
the place feels quirky - exceptional (or at least tries to be), but not for some very high reason. Just a little quirk. Just a little bit of colour in the monotony. No pretense of grandeur, just a local narrative, just as Lyotard predicted…
no large aspects of your worldview are changed - normal for postmodernism. Modernism tried to woo you with its ideals.
shifts your preconceptions of that sort of place / experience
relativizes differences into ‘both sides bad’, etc, and…
shows authority / tradition in a bad light - the laugh of the trickster - subverts through:
showing the mundane, profane side - people love to peek behind the curtain
embarrassment of that source of authority. Done by brining up unserious things around that authority. That destroys our innate feeling of sacrum, deepening the postmodern trance of anguish.
accusations of hypocrisy - often happens with ‘queering’ historical figures
induction of fomo (‘person X was very smart / talented’) and also pushes it back (‘but they didn’t have a social life’)
makes you think, but not too much. ‘oh, I can really think about X (topic tangential to everyday worries) in a Y way (regime mandated mindset)’
leaves out opportunities to feel smart - remembering, knowing, fun facts but still within the simulacrum
shows you a different world, yet brings you back with the conclusion that now it’s better - we’re in control after all…
re-establishes the validity of tradeoffs that have occured. You are where you were meant to be. 'It's not perfect, whole history was bad, only the last few decade we've come to our senses.'
Let us not confuse the regime reinforcement with the craft. They have optimized techne of place-presenation and storytelling:
keep your focus by chaining narratives, adding hooks to make you raise your brow and hold your breath
storytellers use the fractionation technique - bringing you in and out of ‘listener trance’ . That is a subset of the hypnosis hypothesis. It says that ‘going on autopilot’, getting lost in music, etc is a variant of hypnosis, all using similar brain patterns.
usage of the minimally counterinuitive idea technique
Exceptions
Obviously, there are holy sites - see the Tate Modern gallery. Glorification of the regime's greatest achievements - fighting racism and dismantling the Empire.
And this is not limited to the GAE agents of influence, priests doing sermons aren’t free from these tropes.
That probably relates to Baudrillard and Guy Debord, but at this point I haven’t read the latter. If this post interested you, they are the further reading I’d suggest.
Have fun on your soonest trip!
