Experience of life in the Soviet Union always forced me to avoid the theme ‘Art of the Future’ and futurological themes in general. This is probably connected with the fact that the Soviet ideology was always directed toward the future – the ‘building of Communism’ – and did not pay attention to the existential life of man ‘here and now’. In the Soviet Union, neither life itself nor the rights of the individual were worth anything. And one of the forms of resistance to this ideology was to ignore futurology in all its manifestations.
This is the main reason why I cannot say anything about the art of the future.
In my view, we cannot predict what the GOOD art of the future will be like, since good art, the art of the aesthetic, contacts ‘here and now’, is always connected with the present and is deeply personal. Everything that we can imagine in the future is merely BAD art, of which, however, there is always more than good art. In this respect, one can say with confidence that there will be no less bad art in the future than there is now.
Totalitarian social systems are always based one way or another on futurological fantasies, and in this respect futurological forms and totalitarian forms have the same nature.
The future is unclear, and I think it will remain like this. The best works of the present contain these incomprehensible points, obscure to the end, which indicate to us – included – the unknown art of the future.
Wiederabdruck
Serpentine Gallery Manifesto Marathon, 2008.
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[Dieser Text findet sich im Reader Nr. 1 auf S. 403.]