Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Economic Downturn Has Made Everything Boring | new curator:

The late J. G. Ballard once said:

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again… the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

The Ballardian nightmare is that we would run out of innovation. If news patterns are anything to go by, the recession has done something worse: It has put our future on pause.

I’m viewing this through newcurator editorial lens. Everything I blogged was chosen (sort of) carefully. They were not all heralds of a sweeping changes in the museum mainstream, nor end points of discussion. They were little steps or small shifts along a path that I would sometimes get demonstrative over to make a point. I notice there has been a a distinct lack of these steps compared to a couple of months ago; an innovation downturn. Don’t believe what the New York Times says about “Tight Times Loosen Creativity”. What Mike Daisey (and Susie Bright) posted in response says it better than I could.