“What’s happened in recent times is that a whole generation of artists has had its utopia cut off in a fairly vivid way, by losing the left, the future, the ecological truth around them; and they’ve begun to understand that a priority for artists along all different ways of thinking and approaches is to structure and situate micro-utopias within their presentations, and to break down some of the accepted institutional assignments of status, like service or viewership. So not only are you a viewer and I’m an artist, but maybe I’m situationally there to serve or to seduce. And you’re not just there to be the passive or marginally active consumer of my shit, but to engage with me in a situation that radically reassigns values. With that in mind, people today can look back at artists in the past who have explored this kind of social intervention, and who may have found their work illegible within their own cultural circumstances at the moment, and that kind of work may resonate much more directly today and actually seem friendly.“
tony conrad r.i.p.