The Changing Now of Things

All newly produced art is of its moment, and of its time, but things are not what they used to be. It is apparent that in an aftermath of modernity, art is now made with a widespread (yet not universal) sense that currency and contingency is all there is in the world, and maybe all that there will ever be. Such issues appear behind failures of universalism and the absence of historical guarantees. Recent artworks respond with provocative anticipations, of and for the present. Some go further still, by questioning the conditions of both contemporaneity and chronology from multiple vantage points. Issues of chronology appear in art forms in extremely wide-ranging ways, but take specific shape in the sites and spaces of South Africa. The argument offered in this article is shaped by encounters with such distinct artworks. Specific examples anticipate a present by offering what the author calls flexible chronology: inventive modes of temporal awareness and narrativization. A stronger sense of awareness opens into negotiations between self and other in relation to political, cultural and ideological forces, including transformation. Such are the productive tensions that are present for artists in South Africa, perhaps more than ever before

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Chronology · Contingency · Epistemology · Modernity · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Social science · Sociology · Universalism · African history and culture studies · History · Law · Philosophy · South African History and Culture

• Writing Desire and History

  Leana van der Merwe•International Journal of African…•2019

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