Liquid Dreams

In my attempts to further probe issues related to unfixed, varying or mercurial personalities, I picked up the book Liquid Modernity by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who forwards the claim that culture today is liquid and thus in a continual state of being in between. Bauman describes Modernity as subject to “fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and [an] inclination to constant change”(viii). He claims that a condition of such liquidity is that there is an obsessive and compulsive drive to continue to make things Modern, to modernize; everything (and this includes identity) is in constant flux and in a constant state of “becoming” rather than being established, intact or complete. In this sense, the new is never sufficiently stable to be fixed or enduring as it is too quickly replaced and becomes the old, the dated. Bauman goes on to say that “change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty” and I would tend to agree with him (viii). 

He explains that liquidity is a product or result of the desire or “quest for solidity”(ix), that we seek improvement despite not having an ultimate image of what we would like the world to look like. I have come to view this angle as a moving without direction while maintaining the premise that such a movement is good and progressive.

I am wondering then if perhaps this is not only applicable to culture and society at large but pertains as well to our emotional states whereby we are all, in a sense, locked in perpetual adolescence, a liminal space, a space in between. With this, I am brought as well to the Process Art of the 1960s and 1970s and particularly to Richard Serra’s 1968 film “Hand Catching Lead”, a three minute recording of a piece of lead dropping and a hand attempting to catch the raw material as it falls into the frame. Serra thus draws attention not to any final product, but rather to crude matter and the ways in which both the piece of lead and the hand are altered, becoming weathered through the repetitive action.

I am also interested in the current status of drawing as a medium on its own rather than as being perceived merely as a mode or document of process. Can drawing be esteemed important enough in and of itself that it is a final product? Is it possible that no project in any medium can be thought to ever be complete? Or, does a work of art change by way of analysis and interpretation throughout time?

In a sense, solidity is no longer a viable option. While it may be attractive to some, it is simply not believable; any morsel of proof of outcome is impossible. In addition, the world is so diverse that any single solid could never succeed to represent all of humanity. It seems that even our definitions of primordial sensations or emotions such as hunger or sadness are felt at radically different levels that the words we use to describe such experience prove to be fickle and fluid. But perhaps ultimately, the riskiness of liquidity keeps us on our toes and motivates us to be active citizens. Although we may not have any given plan, it is vital to remember that in all of history, no one has been able to predict the future. If this is all the case, we might as well continue to follow our liquid dreams.