The belief within the impossibility of a position of grasping the planet in its totality seems to be a logical consequence of materialist philosophy. The religious tradition, alongside idealistic philosophy, understood one\u2019s soul or reason as nonmaterial and purely spiritual, allowing the planet in its totality to be seen from an external, transcendent position. But if a person\u2019s is merely a cloth thing among other material things, then the meta-position seems impossible. Indeed, we are totally immersed within a up to date world\u2014or better put, contemporary civilization\u2014in which one often speaks about cultural differences. there\u2019s just one institution that doesn\u2019t totally belong to our times . it\u2019s the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t speak of specific museums but rather of the conservation of historical objects and their display within the times . While these objects from the past\u2014seen within the here and now\u2014belong to the times , they even have no present use. There are in fact other objects\u2014urban buildings for example\u2014that have their origins within the past but, through their use by their inhabitants, they become integrated into the times . But objects placed during a museum aren\u2019t used for any practical purposes: they continue to be witnesses of the past, a time external to our world. Thus, they\u2019re meta-objects, occupying an area outside of our world, during a space that Michel Foucault defined as heterotopic space. And if one wants a definition of art, it\u2019s the following: art consists of the objects that remain after the cultures which produced them have disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From its beginning, the artwork is handled during a way that permits it to survive culture. While one often speaks about the artwork as a commodity, it\u2019s not a traditional commodity. the traditional commodity is formed to be consumed\u2014in other words, to be destroyed (eaten as bread, used as a car). So, during a certain sense, art is an anti-commodity. it\u2019s anesthetize the condition of conservation\u2014prevented from being destroyed by time and by use. And this, actually, is that the essential characteristic of art: it survives its original culture, taking an extended journey through all the opposite , later cultures. It remains at an equivalent time foreign to those other cultures\u2014an alien in their midst, carrying with it the knowledge of its past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The belief within the impossibility of a position of grasping the planet in its totality seems to be a logical consequence of materialist philosophy. The religious tradition, alongside idealistic philosophy, understood one\u2019s soul or reason as nonmaterial and purely spiritual, allowing the planet in its totality to be seen from an external, transcendent position. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18,21],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n