' If space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, Junk-Space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet. The built product of modernization is not modern architecture but Junkspace. Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, or more
precisely, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout'Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace.
JUNKSPACE
The idea of recycling far from being new or groundbreaking justly points towards an interesting place in the evolution of contemporary art in times of mass culture overdoses alongside paradoxical but systematic ones of widespread material need due to global economic downturns : what architect- theoretician Rem Koolhaas has defined in 2002 as the JUNKSPACE era. The result of the unprecedented fusion of capitalism and culture and its collateral damages. ' If space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, Junk-Space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet. The built product of modernization is not modern architecture but Junkspace. Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, or more precisely, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout' *.
To say that our globalizing culture consumes as much as it litters in order to create its present situates the idea of Junkspace. Its the residue that humanity leaves on planetary space. The contemporary artist has to handle and to adapt to Junkspace in order to create new forms and to define its existence. It's what I intend to do.
On a certain Parisian morn not so long ago, on the way to my workshop I forgot my linen canvas in the metro wagon. Alone and furious at myself I turned around to see an employee busy piling up the leftover pieces of commercial posters he had just ripped off the wall in order to place fresh ones. The paper, after feeling it, presented an immediate advantage : it had multiple layers strengthened by heavy waterproof industrial glue and was visually exciting. The idea to recycle the debris and enter the urban post-modern overdose with energetic, abstract, architectonic paint made its way. Approach the suburbs of Street Art without giving in, collaborate with recycled collage like a 1950's Mimmo Rotella, without falling in line.
Our system takes over space creating a tantalizing network of neutral space, purely utilitarian, destined to be destroyed after use or pass through the inevitable upgrade, depending on budgets, crisis or fashions of the day. These dead spaces have in the 1980's given birth to a fringe of post-urban artists, those of my generation. But that first post-urban language, too often linked to social revolt, has ironically lost itself in consumerist fascination by lack of cohesion or self-definition.
Its expression in its raw state intuitively pointed towards Junkspace. Koolhaas's definition of Junkspace brings an analytic link to the natural evolution of contemporary art of these last 30 years, giving a name to the new post modern.
I agree that the globalizing world, Junkspace, has as a finality the ultimate conquest of the all human until proposing on the finish line its own version of universality. So, to think about it all, the Junkspace artist's mission is to surf and express himself around, above, under, inside or via the debris of modernization, with a step back from the meta-playground that our system has become.
Firpuz Farman-Farmaian
January 2013, Tarifa, Spain.