Cultural and literary critics suggested that there were two significant stages of art since the turn of the 20th century, modernism and post-modernism. The economy, society, culture and subject is constantly changing, radically and rapidly, showing no sign of slowing down, the development of the internet and network has become a dominant part of the current society, thus giving rise to a new era — the "network culture" as Kazys Varnelis referred to in "The Rise of Network Culture". The network culture has a significant impact on the art world as artists reflect the interconnected world in their works, incorporating and remixing various media, expand upon the themes of fiction and reality, addressing the changes and challenges of the network culture.
The definitions and boundaries between these stages have been debated over the years and the works and approach of artists have continued to evolve. While originality and authorship was highly valued during the era of modernism, appropriating existing objects and images into new context became a widespread practice in postmodernism when Duchamp's Fountain shook the foundation of art history, as the internet becomes a dominant culture, recreating and rearranging things became a norm, artists started remixing elements in their art. The ubiquitous connection of the globalized network characterize today's society, information is easily accessible, leads to a social influence of opinions, behaviours. Eduardo Navas, a scholar theorizing the phenomenon of remix suggested that perhaps nothing was ever a complete "original" creation as individuals are constantly exposed to many things, especially in a globalized era. Artists in this interconnected world are not only able to creatively rearrange elements of preexisting works or events, combine different mediums and medias, physical and digital, visual and interactive, but also collaborate with other artists, redefining the idea of single authorship in art.
“I’m interested in how to quantify the different variations of being alive…how to intensify the presence of things.”
Pierre Huyghe is a contemporary French artists whose works blurs the line between fiction and reality in the form of installations, films and public event. Huyghe''s works tackle social issues, the yearning for utopia, the lure of spectacle in mass media, and the impact of Modernism on contemporary values and belief systems ( Artnet 21, 2018 ). Huyghe is known as an innovator of "post-production techniques, reusing existing media to produce new forms of art ( Guggenheim, 2018 ). The conceptual film "Untitled: (Human Mask)" ( 2014 ) by Huyghe is a reaction to a 2012 YouTube video, "Fuku-chan Monkey in wig, mask, works Restaurant!" featuring what appears to be a little girl in a black dress, is actually a monkey with a white human mask serving and entertaining the Japanese customers in a restaurant as they tip her with soybeans. Huyghe was intrigued by the bizarre imagery, and relationship between human and animal,
and reinterpret the character, Fuku-chan in his film with a cinematic approach, wandering in an abandoned restaurant in Fukushima after the disaster, lonely and detached from its environment as it desperately tries to make a connection with its surroundings. Huyghe incorporated two different actual events, the monkey waitress and the devastating disaster that hit Fukushima into a new context connecting reality and influencing our perception of the truth surrounding it.
The blurring between fiction and reality is another characteristics of art created in the era of network culture. Contrary to modernism where the self is alienated from the work and the narrator whose involvement in a story that often explore the theme of identity usually inhibit objectivity, post modernism on the other hand rejects the the grand narrative as traditional stories are rewritten and questioned, subverting the topics of gender and sexuality, narrators often refers to themselves and the external world, unaware of the difference between fiction and reality ( Matteo, 2018 ). Superficially, artists today may appear to exhibit the same intentions like that of postmodernism of blurring the lines between fiction and reality, however, today, history is revived with the mythological elements which was rejected by the previous era, as Dr Alison Gibbons, Reader in Contemporary Stylistics suggested, the "post" postmodernism culture is returning to the idea of realism, and emotions are once again an essential element of fiction.
Huyghe is known for creating scenarios which explores the boundaries of fantasy and reality. In this particular film, ( Untitled ) Human Mask, Huyghe artistically put together contrasting elements of real and unreal. Curator Manuel Cirauqui explained that despite being presented in the form of a film, it is deemed a portrait as there is no plot, the subject in question is not a human nor have the persona of a human being as most viewers would expect, but a monkey disguised as one. The relationship between the primal (fear, loneliness, emotion generally) and mediation of the primal (through art and commerce, metaphor and image, caging of the self and the Other) is a recurring theme ( Hoffmann, 2015). The monkey in this film is personified, her behaviour detached, loneliness and fear that seems to envelop her capture the tug on the heartstrings of the viewer yet incomprehensible at the same time. As animals are incapable of acting, Huyghe is addressing a profound truth of the relationship between man and nature in an artificial scenario he created. Huyghe provoked the stable structure of this world and others virtual worlds, creating a cultural confrontation with unpredictable elements ( Tiravanija, 2010 ).
Art is ever-changing, constantly evolving as people progress, moving back and forth as critics struggle to pinpoint the moment a shift in the art world started, even more so in today's globalized world as everything is interconnected. Artists today like Huyghe often boldly address the changes, challenges and consequences of the information age, constantly identifying alternative methods of remixing contemporary art and culture, expand our approach to story-telling while retaining certain themes from previous movements and era.
Reference
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