Abstract

Bauman offers an exposition of his ideas against the context of art and artistic practices. He draws links between his work on ‘liquid modernity’ and the practices of Gustav Metzger dating back to the 1960s. In particular he stresses how Metzger’s concept of ‘auto-destructive art’ anticipates his own argument on the ways in which contemporary consumerism demands constant novelty, and hence a relentless flow of waste and dissipation - ‘disposal is already contained in the original design’. He develops his insights with reference to the work of Villeglé, Valdes and Braun-Vega who each exemplify key aspects of the liquid modern; creation and destruction, the hopeless and desperate battle for attention, the directionless march of time. It is a sequence of incessant new beginnings, but each new start also contains the seeds of its own destruction and disappearance.