This article was taken from the August 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
In 1968, Stewart Brand pub-lished the first Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural DIY compendium selling useful products and disseminating information to anyone interested in creating new ways of life. Brand recognised very early on that personal computers held the possibility for great social renovation - an intuition that came to him in 1962, he told me, when he witnessed Stanford computer scientists playing Spacewar. He saw computing as another form of "access to tools". He recently told me that he believes curating has "been democratised by the net, so, in one sense, everybody is curating. If you're writing a blog, it's curating."
In the field of exhibitions, however, digital life's potential is only just beginning to be explored. Paola Antonelli recently curated one of the first large-scale shows online, for MoMA, and websites such as e-flux are exploring the global digital network.
But a generation of younger individuals is beginning to contribute to contemporary art and culture. Born in the age of digitisation, this group, referred to by novelist Douglas Coupland as "the Diamond Generation", shares an irreverence for traditional notions of authorship and cultural heritage, something that is manifested in their work. They have instant knowledge and technological know-how at their fingertips, and they rely on digital social platforms to showcase their new ideas and culturally iconoclastic approaches. The celebrated young artist Ryan Trecartin was quoted as saying: "People born in the 90s are amazing. I can't wait until they all start to make art." The creative climate of 2014 validates Trecartin's enthusiasm, as this new generation starts to enter the stage with a fresh set of radical and compelling artistic positions.
The year 1989 was marked by several paradigm-shifting events.
Although the collapse of the BerlinWall heralded the beginning of the post-Cold War period, TiananmenSquare became marred by studentprotest and mass bloodshed. The Russian army left Afghanistanafter a nine-year occupation, and the first Global Positioning System satellite started orbiting the Earth. Perhaps most significantly, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal in which he outlined his idea for what would soon become the world wide web. We are now seeing the beginningstages of the maturation of the first generation who never experienced a world before these historic developments. Could there be some connection between such seminal global events and the creative production of these young artists, writers, activists, architects, film-makers, scientists and entrepreneurs?
Alongside curator Simon Castets, I have begun an investigation charting the work of those born in or after 1989. 89plus, as we call it, is a form of international research that follows the development of this generational shift through various platforms, including conferences, books, periodicals and exhibitions. One of the most recent 89plus projects was a series of interviews at the 2014 Design Indaba Conference, where we presented a whole new generation of South African digital artists. The series featured innovators born in 1989 and after, working within fields as diverse as the visual arts, music and social activism in Africa, a continent whose population's median age is the youngest globally.
The South African edition of 89plus brought to light the voices of artists who are only just beginning to be heard, speaking about the need to control their own storytelling. These young artists have a renewed and imaginative sense of self and a will to resist erasure and silencing from the grand narrative of history.
This is what makes art essential and important. It makes clear that change is possible -- through empathy and courageous acts of speaking out. This 89plus generation has grown up in an entirely new world. Perhaps from them, we can learn something about our future.
Hans-Ulrich Obrist is coordinator of exhibitions and programmes at London's Serpentine Gallery, and author of Ways of Curating.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
