Popmodernism – Recycling 20th Century Culture

Pop and modernism: the two grand – and apparently antagonistic – cultural currents running through the twentieth century. Defying the notion: the twain shall never meet, this study circle will examine pop and modernism, not as two opposing attitudes towards life and culture, but as the aesthetic negotiation of the century. Not pop-modernism – the popularization of modernism; neither as pop-modernism – a modernist or avant-garde approach to pop; but as popmodernism.

In this study circle the idea of cultural recycling will be central. Cultural recycling may be defined as lifting former practices out of their previous contexts and putting them into new ones. Looking back at the different expressions, the cultural artifacts, as well as the theoretical literature of the twentieth century, there is great potential for such recyclings.

The development of a modern media culture changed most kinds of cultural expressions. The gramophone, film, and the typewriter made cultural products intimately related to industrial products. This, however, also altered the production of the so-called “non-mediated” expressions. In one way, the reproduction constituted “the original”; the gramophone established the musical concert as “live.” The “authenticity” perceived in the liveness of a concert, a theater, or a reading, changed radically, and this could also be one entry point into another important category: that of performativity. From theater studies to queer studies and beyond, performativity is one of the current theoretical buzzwords. But working with the prehistory of performativity within the twentieth century’s different cultural expressions will give the word a new kind of currency, where other dimensions and other modernisms across the cultural field are highlighted.

The theoretical and methodological framework for the study circle will be broadly interdisciplinary. Different points of departure, from cultural studies, media studies, literary studies, aesthetics, and cultural history will give the study circle multiple perspectives necessary to grasp the complexities of the twentieth century’s cultural landscape. The aim of this study circle is to establish a network across disciplines within the university. In addition to this the project is related, and indebted, to a wide range of writes, also in the fringes of academic life, including the blogosphere. It is the ambition of the study circle to participate in this blogosphere with ongoing, yearlong, NSU-activities.

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