How Latitudes Become Forms

Book excerpt: "The rise of globalism has created tremendous challenges to old economic, political, and cultural paradigms, and these changes are reflected in artistic practices. Disciplinary boundaries are crossed as easily as geographical ones. How does the new internationalism that we are facing affect aesthetics and artistic production? Is there a link, for example, between the rise of video works and the global availability of the digital medium? Does the global information age facilitate an 'international language of art' and an alternative reading of art history, toward art histories? From the perspective of a museum of modern and contemporary art, the institution has to overcome a majore contradiction between its mission of permanence and its mission of change. How can cultural institutions contribute to the revamping of their own structures now that the hegemony of Western modernity is being challenged? How can museums connect with new audiences through different practices, different scholarship, and different interpretative strategies growing out of the sedimentation of their histories? To invite and encourage such dialogue, 'How latitudes become forms : art in a global age' looks at current scholarship on globalism and changing curatorial practices, and identifies critical models provided by artists themselves. This catalogue features thought-provoking essays and conversations by curators, critics, and cultural programmers from across the world as well as the multidisciplinary artworks of more than forty visual, film/video, performing, and new media artists from Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States." -- book cover.