anything goes?

I was casually surfing the net when I came across Interior Semiotics.


Basically the low down:
  • Girl opens a can of expired spaghetti-ish food (took a really long time - definitely not housewife material)
  • Smears the food all over her shirt
  • Sprouts some nihilistic message
  • Cuts open her leggings and proceeds to expel vaginal discharge/urinate into the can.
It's not really that shocking - I've heard of similar 'art' performances before, plus there's some really nasty gory/scatological stuff online these days. But I'm looking at the hipster audience cheering at the end and thinking: Are they really seeing it as art?

To start off, art is hard to define in this modern times as people are looking for more and more creative ways to express themselves. No more confining to just the classic medium such as paintings, music, film or photography, Post-modernism ushered in the theory of 'anything goes'. A few months back Roger Ebert was discussing on the topic of whether video games is considered art. Then there's the video that you've just seen.

From a personal viewpoint of a average guy like myself, art to me is about (1) creating a form of asethetics that stimulate the senses and (2) bearing a signifance to its culture and time period.

Putting Interior Semiotics into my definition, it... probably is. For (1) it definitely stimulated my senses, while for (2) it could be a nihilistic response by the youth in view of all the stuff thats happening right now e.g. terrorism, financial crisis, etc.

But unlike the reaching the end credits of a great film which provokes deep thoughts and feelings of catharsis, it instead brought forth feelings of disdain and disgust.

Thus to me its rubbish art, but then again the hipsters in the video loved it. Am I missing out on something?
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