Where's it all going down?

March 27, 2006 9:44 AM

I'm reading a book that has a lot of references to Paris between the wars and culture that flowed underneath it. The surrealist movement, people like Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the brothels and debauchery, etc. Similar situations have happened everywhere - the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Generation and countless others. I'm sure you can think of more. My question is this: Where is this stuff happening now?

Where, in fifty years, will we look look back on and say "Man, I sure I wish I had been in x in the '00s". I suppose this involves quite a bit of speculation, but what are your opinions?

posted by borkingchikapa to society & culture (23 comments total)

Oh, I'm not asking about places with lots of brothels, thanks.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:51 AM on March 27, 2006

The internet.
posted by ND¢ at 9:53 AM on March 27, 2006

New York, Berlin, and Tokyo. Also London, maybe, and somewhere on the West Coast between LA and Vancouver, but I can't decide -- it's all good.
posted by Rash at 10:02 AM on March 27, 2006

Dubai. Shanghai. Simply because there's such a ridiculous amount of money flying around both of them, and they're each outposts of relative freedom for their regions.

Well-known world capitols like NYC, Tokyo, and Paris have been and will continue to be very interesting places, but I think you're getting at places that are not quite as well-known for being interesting.
posted by adamrice at 10:12 AM on March 27, 2006

Dubai? Can you even drink there? I don't think there is any one place right now. Times have changed where people are not tied down as much as they were. Like ND¢, mentioned, the internet is taking the place of creative communities as they were in the past. I would say some of the main cities in Europe have been the rallying point for the creative from all areas. For awhile Prague was a hotspot, I'm not sure if it still is.
posted by JJ86 at 10:45 AM on March 27, 2006

If I told you it would ruin it.
posted by TonyRobots at 10:48 AM on March 27, 2006

I've lived in Dubai, yeah you can drink there but it's not really on the list of places I'd nominate for cultural hotspot status.
I doubt it's *just* the cities though, millions of people in Paris at that time probably didn't have a clue at the things happening there. Any large city, NYC, London, Berlin, Paris etc. still have these kinds of things happening, you just have to be part of them to notice.
posted by atrazine at 11:00 AM on March 27, 2006

In the nineties, they said Budapest and Prague were the new Paris. Now I hear that Berlin and Shanghai are the new Prague.
posted by nyterrant at 11:09 AM on March 27, 2006

I would agree with the internet, with physical places like SF tied to the creation end.

The best thing to do would be to find current examples of writing, art, film, etc. that you find cutting edge and then figure out where most of the people creating this stuff live. That will be your answer.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 11:14 AM on March 27, 2006

I feel that communications, media, marketing are catching up with new trends so fast and becoming involved in creating them that there is less and less of a possibility of an underground scene. William Gibson mentions this in a couple of his books.
posted by lunkfish at 11:24 AM on March 27, 2006

Also to some extent there are mythologies created around times and places that people are really doing it, exciting things are going on, and we feel that we are missing out.

I mean London has a happening art scene, people are doing e's and frolicking with each other all the time, but most people have to get on with some sort of normal life.

When people look back and start to apply stereotypes and nostalgia maybe it will be seen as a golden era.
posted by lunkfish at 11:31 AM on March 27, 2006

Folks saying "the internet": I agree it has the potential, but can you point me to actual places where the internet is like Paris in the 20s, Prague in the 90s, and other such examples?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:30 PM on March 27, 2006

I would have to agree that "The Internet" is as close as we get -- but for specifics, I'd point you to places like Gmail, Yahoo/Google maps, Blogger, Metafilter and iTunes. These sites are revolutionary -- but they are changing the ways we find information and entertainment; they aren't artistic movements.

In my opinion there aren't any major, innovative, long-lasting artistic movements happening online at the moment. I'm sure others will disagree and point to blogs, podcasts and web video. These are all fascinating, and I personally consume them all, but I don't think they are especially innovative in terms of CONTENT (they ARE innovated in terms of delivery).

When I read a blog, I'm not reading a new type of prose. When I listen to a podcast, I'm basically hearing the same sorts of stuff I've hear for years on the radio. There are exceptions, of course, but they aren't wide-ranging enough to become the you-were-there-then artforms.

Here's my prediction -- which I'm admittedly pulling out of my ass: in a few years (maybe 10 or 20), the technology will settle down somewhat. At the moment, it's in great ferment. We're riding the crest of the Web, high-def TV, iPods, TiVos, etc. We're trying to sort out what technologies we're going to use and how we're going to use them. At the moment, these concerns overtake artistic innovation.

But once things settle down, and the Web becomes commonplace, THAT'S when you should look for innovation. At the moment it's still a big deal to FIND old information on the web ("Oh look! A new book on gutenberg.org!")

Once people get bored with content-delivery, they only place to go is to content itself.
posted by grumblebee at 12:45 PM on March 27, 2006

MeFi meetups?
posted by SuperNova at 12:46 PM on March 27, 2006

I think lunkfish's answer is close to the truth of the matter. There were just as many "things happening" in New York in the 20's and 30's as Paris, we just don't lump them together in our perception of history.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:51 PM on March 27, 2006

O'Reilly conferences, the EFF, the Long Now seminars.
posted by rdc at 1:03 PM on March 27, 2006

The Web. Community is communication, not geography.

You're not asking for a list of what the important artistic movements right now are, you're asking for a location, and it's the Web. We're not being glib: no other answer would be truthful.

And it's not that physical collectives aren't producing interesting art anymore, it's just that what they're producing are not the works that will define our time for future generations.

I'm pretty sure that the following are at least some of the themes that will be identified as defining our moment in time (I won't use the 'z' word):

1. The formation of communities based on interest rather than physical proximity, and, therefore,
   
2. A so-called "long tail" phenomenon for art, where instead of a couple of really large schools of thought that dominate, you'll have thousands and thousands of very small communities that do their own thing.
   
3. The disappearance of a top-down authority (or the illusion of one) that says what art is, or what good art is. The age of citizen-editors.
   
4. An explosion in the total amount of material produced.

posted by Hildago at 1:22 PM on March 27, 2006

When I read a blog, I'm not reading a new type of prose. When I listen to a podcast, I'm basically hearing the same sorts of stuff I've hear for years on the radio. There are exceptions, of course, but they aren't wide-ranging enough to become the you-were-there-then artforms.

I'm not sure I grok the distinction you're making between content and delivery. is interactive fiction, say, just fiction but told using an interactive method of delivery? or is there something different about the experience of engaging with a story interactively that makes that a matter of content?
posted by juv3nal at 1:41 PM on March 27, 2006

You won't know for another 20 or 30 years, at which point the down-and-out writers and artists nobody's heard of now will be famous and start cranking out memoirs about Brazzaville/Ulaan Bator/Sana'a in the '00s and we'll all wish we had been there then.
posted by languagehat at 1:53 PM on March 27, 2006

Did Hemingway's Paris truly exist, or is it a literary fiction agreed on by a group or writers to promote themselves? One may ask the same about 1960s San Francisco. I want to believe, but I am skeptical.
posted by LarryC at 6:29 PM on March 27, 2006

I always thought that someone would write A Movable Feast about Portland, OR in the 1990s. Maybe this book is as close as it will ever come?
posted by Staggering Jack at 6:54 PM on March 27, 2006

I'm not sure I grok the distinction you're making between content and delivery.

The line between the two is fuzzy, but it's definitely there. Sometimes a delivery vehicle is SO revolutionary that it (radically) changes the content. I would classify still photography vs. film this way. In other words, watching many pictures go by quickly radically changes the way we think of pictures and the types of stories we tell with pictures. Reading an article on Slate isn't radically different from reading it in a printed newspaper.

Yes, there are new forms on the web (i.e. hypertext fiction), but I don't think they've had much cultural impact. Flash cartoons are just cartoons. The one BIG exception is computer games. Those seem to be a totally new form (i.e. there was never anything like DOOM before the late 20th century). Maybe gamers and game companies are the new innovators.

Predicting the future is foolish, but I'll do it anyway: hypertext fiction and the like will be the smell-o-vision of the late 20th/early 21st century. We'll look back on it as a fun experiment that didn't catch on.

Most artistic experiences that DO catch on -- that last (and impact many people) for decades and centuries -- are SIMPLE and linear. I don't mean they are simple to make. I mean they are simple to receive. Narrative movies are an example. Hard to make. Easy to receive. Paintings. Photos. Novels. Etc.

As-soon-as artists add a layer of interactivity or complexity, they risk their projects becoming ephemeral. I'm NOT saying non-linear, interactive works are bad. I'm just reporting history.

Throughout history, artists regularly rebel against simple narrative (or linear) forms. They will always do this, and I suspect it's healthy. But these rebellions rarely make a lasting impact (outside of rarefied artistic or academic circles). Think 3D movies (which keep on trying, bless them, but never really catch on), atonal music, interactive fiction, happenings, etc.

The simple forms -- melody, narrative, etc. -- touch us instantly and sensually, so they tend to win out in art's Darwinian-playing field.

Sometimes a new form catches on -- Impressionism or film. But note that these new forms are still pretty simple to receive, pretty linear. They don't require interactivity. They are usually narrative. We like stories that have beginnings, middles and ends.

Here in 2006, I don't see many people coming up with new forms that ARE simple and non-interactive. Even the best-selling games tend to cling to linearity and narrative.
posted by grumblebee at 2:35 PM on March 30, 2006

I think you need to visit Burning Man to find out what's happening now.
posted by Rafster at 1:54 AM on March 31, 2006