Slam hits home when it's shouted to an audience, a sculpture when it's encountered where and when it makes sense, and a poem is only a trace of ink until eyes rest on it. Art circulates, often seducing, questioning, surprising or inspiring. Art can live for a moment or a few centuries, as long as it resonates with a sensibility.
In schools, the teaching of the arts is slowly evolving: theater and "plastic" arts still have their place, but electronic arts are developing and others are being transformed: oratory arts, music, dance, circus... A.I. is clearly entering the game. Some artistic experiments involving interaction with artificial intelligence are perplexing, as if the artificial artist were the sponge and synthesis of the ideas and people with whom it interacts and who make it evolve... This kind of artistic approach appeals to us, without any commercial aim, unlike other initiatives which are essentially aimed at cornering a share of the art market, particularly in music. In education, we distinguish general education and vocational training from purely commercial ones; they don't have the same aims.
Live art reflects contemporary issues and projects itself into the future; it will always elude classifications that attempt to find it a place in history after the fact. Without the theory of relativity, neither Surrealism nor Cubism would have made sense; the zeitgeist was one of questioning our a-priori about the reality of things. Today, we're elsewhere.
Your recent artistic experiences may well involve the Internet or virtual reality, in addition to theater, TV or art galleries. Pioneering artists feed off contemporary phenomena and help societies as a whole to evolve, often in spite of themselves. Before the first successes of electronic music, dozens of artists explored its potential, often with mixed results.
A.I. and virtual reality are opening up new possibilities, and we haven't yet seen the last of them. However, simpler or older practices do not cease to exist, but, like society as a whole, artistic universes enrich and evolve. If biodiversity is a feature of balanced, resilient environments, artistic diversity is also a feature of dynamic, resilient societies.
Beautiful discoveries
Denys Lamontagne - [email protected]
Illustration - Annie Baillargeon - "At home, every day is a celebration".
