Graduate art seminar Week 5
Bruce Hill

The Caribbean is an example of cultural diversity created as an unintended result of colonization by mixing of African,European, Native American and Asian people over time.Creolization is the "interaction or transactional aggreat of these "cultural wanderings",and as such, makes a good model for the ideas put forth by Bourriaud, that emerging in the space left by the breakdown of a unified modernist cultural overview,is an "altermodernity" that he defines as a process of exchange in all directions.
Bourriaud equates modernism with a passion for ralicality.Twentieth century's avant-garde movements were,at the core, about purification,elimination of the old and creation of the new, whereas post-modernists are more interested in using what ever signs and styles they need by borrowing freely to suit specific situations.
A common theme, used throughout the Radicant,is the idea of the journey, traveling, or wandering as a metaphor for the mixing or exchange
of ideas and cultural forms.Bourriaud argues against cultural determinism,and asks in effect, what are the processes by which the individual artist and social formations create,or change each other. His artist is a nomad willing to inhabit existing forms and change them to suit the moment. He compares this to the botanical family of the radicands, which develop their roots as they advance,and adapt to new environments.
Art becomes an act of translation, the displacement of meaning from one form to another,a form of negotiation better served by the installation than by medium-specific work. "The radicant takes the form of a trajectory or path,…not a stable, closed and self contained identity," rather it is "movement that ultimately permits the formation of an identity".
Victor Segalen seemed ahead of his time when he focused on the historical narrative of marginalized peoples. Segalen coined the term "exote" as one who experiences diversity without romanticizing it and travel to return to one's self.
Bourriaud compares the radicant aesthetic to the links of a chain rather than a fixed or static image.