The Economic Downturn Has Made Everything Boring

I have about 260 feeds going into my Google Reader. Many of them are Google Alerts or delicious subscription-type feeds. I sit in a torrent of information from a plethora of sources. All day, I’ve seen a billion people talking about Ben Stiller printing money. Not that long ago, I stopped trying to report on every story about how museum’s were cauterising massive financial bleeds. We live in a world where a fake museum is making more money than actual ones.

Yes, a fake museum. I don’t care if it said it was the Smithsonian. Any museum using straw as packing material is clearly one rooted in fantasy.

I wondered if I had lost the ability to write about the future. All my news feeds and I can’t find inspiration or motivation to write about the outbreaks in museums. It’s not helped by the New Yorker and David Hockney getting thrills out of making art that looks like bad mid-90s  point-click-adventure games with 2009 technology.

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.

I’m talking about things making the news here. I say nothing against most of the bloggers I read who all make such fascinating reading. Sometimes I think I may as well hand Nina Simon the newcurator keys or risk becoming one of those annoying as hell pingback blogs that just copy my content. That’s why I’ve got delicious and tumblr.

This is also not a criticism of people working in museums (before someone undoubtedly accuses me of this). It’s more a comment on the current State of Things. You can see it in the wider microcosm of the art world. Repatriation and restitution is on the increase with museums all over the world handing back objects or going to court over it. Even JP Morgan recognise a good thing. Economic Plight = Culture / Ownership. There’s an Asset Grab going on and the only people actually buying are part of a French/Arab coalition.

What happened to the museum news? Or should I say, what happened to things in museums that were news-worthy? A dinosaur with bad posture and I think Manchester Museum plan to lock up a man in a tower. Looking at his quotes, it’s probably for the best. Same goes for so many art critics who appear to be having collective attacks of existentialism as they try to work out what they do and what they are now good for.

So I try to think about and research the Metrocurator and Death of the Curator ideas. First thing I find? There was a discussion about so many related issues that not only Godwin’d but stamped over well-worn ground in circles rather than any kind of exchange/development of ideas. It made the whole thing sound horribly and frustratingly boring.