“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, July 26, 2013

Speculative Tate

Also adieu to the speculative Tate. Reza Negarestani, Robin Mackay and I and others wrote these weird labels for existing paintings by the Romantics. Such as the now absent Richard Wilson.

That was in 2010 and would now be impossible.

The nonhuman is nowhere to be seen in this new setup.

Which proves the conventional wisdom that art history is usually about 15 years behind philosophy and literary criticism.

The obviously post colonial vibe of Tate 2.0 sits uneasily inside its post-imprrial Tate sugar BP sponsorship shell.

Reza--oil sponsoring history!

Forwards--into the past!

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