into the pill - Issue 8

"20th century" by Yiannis Grigoriadis

The twentieth century was a period of radical departure from almost every previous area of human activity.

The 20 th century through a series of radical political and social changes gave everyday life a new perspective. The ambiguous interpretations of the facts, the recurring and proportional equal situations, justify the fundamental philosophical theories starting from the ones introduced by Socrates until the ones introduced by G.W.F. Hegel a representative of the German Idealism movement.

The atomic energy, the first and second world war, the long lasting cold-war from which emerged the internet, the revolutions against the oligarchic regimes, the way to women liberation paved by Suffragettes, the racism, the deciphering of the D.N.A. code, terrorism, the new order of things, were some of the innovating thoughts, actions and reactions of this "subversive century". The atheism "imposed" the exaltation of the religion fanaticism. The slogan "No mercy" of the Dadaism evolved into the "No future" of the Sex Pistols and ended up in the "No Fear" of a famous clothing line.

The 21 st century brought an air of optimism and hope which is slowly fading. The situation in the Middle East, the energy shortage, the thread of a nuclear disaster, the ozone pollution, puzzle modern society and still no sort term solution   has been found.

The project "20 th Century (on Video)" aims on the gathering of works by artists who record the wide historical, social, political and technological issues, using the   representative codes of the image, and the classical narrative structures of film, the father of video art.

The 20th century's cities

During the 20 th century, the city finds itself at the centre of international developments, its growth following an ever burgeoning pattern. With 50% of the global population accumulating in cities across the world, the city itself becomes the privileged agent of rapid technological, economic, social and political change. In a planet that increasingly seems to be 'shrinking' as new technologies serve to eliminate actual distance, the world's cities are complicit - though antagonism may often lie at the heart of this relationship - in absorbing the entire sum of dynamic flow and exchange occurring in the context of globalization that is the contemporary condition. Thus, their role as 'nodes' in the networks created by global organizations, multinational corporations in the areas of production and trade, the new economic and political order and the condition of migration, becomes all the more prominent. So it is that cities become the centre stage for war and peace, for research and advancement in knowledge, for a process of fermentation that gives rise to all things new, but also a set against which things tend to take on a mass character, a space that breeds inertia and levels all. Violence, fear, coercion and displacement are present in the urban landscape alongside a massive increase of possibilities, the growing rate by which collectivities are formed; by which critical thought and art are developing.

Information on all these sweeping changes and on the various forms of tension and discrepancy they generate abounds, and its abundance is often provocative; yet this kind of information is almost always confusing. How can we make out the invisible threads of history that at times hold places and people together, at others hold them apart, amidst this hail of trivial descriptions, 'default' details and imposed generalizations?                       

www.20thcentury.gr

ygrigoriadis@gmail.com   

 

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