Altermodern

---

title: "Altermodern" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["visual-arts-genres", "contemporary-art-exhibitions", "criticism-of-postmodernism", "modernity", "art-history"] description: "Method of considering an artwork" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altermodern" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Method of considering an artwork ::

Altermodern, a blend word defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at contextualizing art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism. It is also the title of the Tate Britain's fourth Triennial exhibition curated by Bourriaud.

Concept

In his keynote speech to the 2005 Art Association of Australia & New Zealand Conference, Nicolas Bourriaud explained:

::quote

Artists are looking for a new modernity that would be based on translation: What matters today is to translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network. This “reloading process” of modernism according to the twenty-first-century issues could be called altermodernism, a movement connected to the creolisation of cultures and the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world. ::

Altermodern can essentially be read as an artist working in a hypermodern world or with supermodern ideas or themes.

Exhibitions

Tate Britain 2009

The Tate exhibition includes a series of four one-day events (called "Prologues"), aiming to "introduce and provoke debate" around the Triennial's themes. Each Prologue includes lectures, performances, film and a manifesto text and attempts to define what the curator sees as the four main facets of Altermodern:

1. The end of postmodernism
2. Cultural hybridisation
3. Travelling as a new way to produce forms
4. The expanding formats of art

References

References

1. "[AAANZ 2005]: Nicolas Bourriaud - Keynote".
2. [http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tate-triennial-2009-prologue-1-okwui-enwezor-specious-modernity-speculations Tate triennial 2009 prologue]tate.org.uk {{Webarchive. link. (9 August 2014)
3. [http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tate-triennial-2009-prologue-2-exiles-tj-demos Tate triennial 2009 prologue]tate.org.uk {{Webarchive. link. (4 August 2014)
4. "Tate Triennial 2009 Prologue 3: John Smith - Hotel Diaries".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::