The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds. Globalization and Contemporary Art

Abstract

One effect of globalization is that encounters between different cultures, religions, and languages, as well as between different ethnic and national identities, have intensified. My own explanatory model starts from a theory of rewriting. This theory proceeds from the observation that liberal democratic terms such as integration and assimilation in fact center on the pair of terms inclusion/exclusion. The theory particularly concerns the West and one of its greatest inventions: modernity. The idea of rewriting is based on the assumption that every system consists of a finite number of elements and of a limited number of rules as to how these elements are connected and can be sequenced. How precisely these rewriting processes of cultures, economic systems, and states occur under pressure from globalization was an essential focus of the exhibition The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989 at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, in 2011. This exhibition showed how historical, ethnic, and cultural characteristics are rewritten by the global cultural and economic transformations that are taking place. The world of art offers a glance at these global rewriting processes through a magnifying glass.