I appreciate the term pornomiseria, Pablo, and have been enjoying your newsletter. I wrote about both phenomena you mention here--the cultural informant and the West's fetish for romanticized suffering--in my master's thesis on Documenta 11 and the history of the West's attempts to incorporate or integrate global strains of art into a Western content. When I mentioned this in my Whitney Program interview in which I was told by Ron Clark Okwui Enwezor is a friend of this program. End of interview. I've since recognized it might be an attribute of my autism to be able to hold both the very good intentions of folks like Enwezor and the benefits of the "identity" shows like Documenta 11, Magiciens de la Terre, the 1993 Whitney Biennial, etc in one hand, and also some possible negative consequences in the other. I also studied what I would call ethnoaesthetics under anthropologists because the anti-colonial framework I was advocating for wasn't accepted in the early 2000's. I'm actually grateful for that perspective today and recognize your similar strand of curiosity in your efforts to explain why humans, especially the subset called artists, do what they do.
super interesting article, Pablo!
I appreciate the term pornomiseria, Pablo, and have been enjoying your newsletter. I wrote about both phenomena you mention here--the cultural informant and the West's fetish for romanticized suffering--in my master's thesis on Documenta 11 and the history of the West's attempts to incorporate or integrate global strains of art into a Western content. When I mentioned this in my Whitney Program interview in which I was told by Ron Clark Okwui Enwezor is a friend of this program. End of interview. I've since recognized it might be an attribute of my autism to be able to hold both the very good intentions of folks like Enwezor and the benefits of the "identity" shows like Documenta 11, Magiciens de la Terre, the 1993 Whitney Biennial, etc in one hand, and also some possible negative consequences in the other. I also studied what I would call ethnoaesthetics under anthropologists because the anti-colonial framework I was advocating for wasn't accepted in the early 2000's. I'm actually grateful for that perspective today and recognize your similar strand of curiosity in your efforts to explain why humans, especially the subset called artists, do what they do.
What a great analysis! Thanks Pablo