The prefix ‘meta’ has acquired something of a bad rep over the last few years. It has come to be understood primarily in terms of self-reflection – i.e. a text about a text, a picture about a picture, etc. But ‘meta’ originally intends something rather more colloquial. According to the Greek-English Lexicon the preposition and …
We feel we need to justify our use of the term metamodernism. In a future post we will explain its etymological origin and its relationship to the Platonic/Voegelin concept of metaxis. Here we will briefly refer to some of the term’s previous uses. Although we are the first to use the term metamodernism to describe …
Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that contemporary architecture, like so many other aesthetic practices, is no longer postmodern. Although one could also point towards somewhat more stylistic changes (and we will definitely do so in later posts), the end of the postmodern is most clearly signaled here by the return …
Although Ragnar Kjartansson’s work is often characterised by a melancholy sadder than the most postmodern pessimism, it never becomes apathetic. And while it tends to be as ecstatic as modern optimism can get, it never turns fanatic. Performances like The End(2009) and the truly inspired Sorrow Conquers Happiness (2006) are ironic, parodic and frequently pastiche. …
The ecosystem is severely disrupted, the financial system is increasingly uncontrollable, and the geopolitical structure has recently begun to appear as unstable as it has always been uneven. This…
The postmodern years of plenty, pastiche and parataxis are over. In fact, if we are to believe the many academics, critics and pundits whose books and essays describe the decline and demise of the postmodern, they have been over for quite a while now. But if these commentators agree the postmodern condition has been abandoned, …
