parasite

To parasitize on the creations of others. An example. Artist X produces pamphlet-like excrement in which he conjures up semi-artistic and semi-art historical magical tricks. The underlying idea is to take a free ride on the aura of interesting names and thus, gradually, assign some meaning to the meaninglessness of his own work.

 

Another example. A wide spread form of contemporary art is basically nothing but the regurgitation of modernisms of all kind, a practice that hardly can be distinguished neither formally nor concerning the content from the academism of the 17th and 18th Centuries.

The shattering lack of substantial content is thinly hidden beneath all sorts of formal sleight-of-hand, tricks that have been a part of the accepted discourse for decennia and that usually invoke from the viewer nothing but an art-historical aha-Erlebnis, similar to a Pavlovian reflex.

 

Still another example of parasitism is the practice, widely spread among second rate talents, to look for the company of Big Names. It suffices to say: 'I met Louise Bourgeois...', or to ardently pursue one or other luminary, to - gradually - acquire an aura of importance.

 

Almost identically, but slightly different, is a form of parasitism of content: by means of a purely formal sophistication of contextual levels, a work of art or an oeuvre suggest a content that is essentially absent. This phonemenon is widespread to such a degree that it threatens to empty the discours of everything that presents itself as contemporary.

 

Parasitism for academics: the current discourse turns into a parody of itself, a hybrid form of intellectualistic diversion, art historic earnestness and snot or migraine.