Art in 2021 = a series of nadirs and chiaroscuros.

Our conversations kept reverting to the idea of “art” and how “art” was – despite sometimes being incredibly valuable – largely useless to society as a whole. “Art” was thus a waste of humankind’s time and creativity, and was largely to blame for society’s problems (and ultimately, its doom). Capitalist values have led us to believe that we need to constantly strive for more and more objects that give us more and more unnecessary joy and meaning for our lives.

Artists will engage nadirs and chiaroscuros in order to grapple with the blunt and brutal reality and absence of any moral and invisible truths. The narrative is embedded with a subversion of hope, facts, the familiar, the clear. This is a narrative of dread and irresolution, of stasis and fidget. It’s a narrative of translation rather than innovation, striking at translation’s inherent violence, and laying bare the stark boundary of the unknown and the known, knowledge itself, and its limits.

The four narrative attractors we’ve selected are cognate with current dystopic fiction, and our post-apocalyptic landscape is the last man flinging his bloodied hand at the sunset.

The artist as a figure who is stubbornly concerned with creating truth. (reminds me of something).

A refusal to acknowledge the reality that is clearly now the truth.

The coming together of a newly found knowledge and the realisation that this knowledge is useless, despite its validity.

The idea that in the coming years humanity will bear witness to its own total annihilation.