#Postruptivity
SHATTER
The term disruptive is initially applied to physical phenomena that stand out because of their suddenness and their detonating character. A storm, an abrupt and resounding climatic disturbance, constitutes the archetypal example of a disruptive phenomenon in the natural environment. From a visual point of view, lightning’s luminous electrical discharges have, from the beginning of time, played a major allegoric role signifying illumination, power and swiftness. Because of this, and in spite of its sometimes maleficent essence and its unforeseeable character, lightning’s positive connotations are primarily considered. Whether it be joy, dazzle or genius, this perforating flash releases burdens, relieves tensions and opens new perspectives. In a shattering and devastating way, lightning suddenly releases an enormous amount of accumulated energy. By extension, disruptivity can be adapted to any phenomenon; it may be a simple detail, which unexpectedly erupts to change our consciousness of things.
PERTURB
When it is applied to the study of societies, it is within an economic context that the term disruptive has been most frequently used these last few years. More particularly for all questions relating to innovation. This includes everything that has to do with the invention of new technologies, launching new products or the implementation of as-yet unheard-of services. When it is applied to socio-cultural phenomena, disruptivity is often interpreted as a rupture caused by the emergence of sudden events, whose imminence and force of impact too often remain imponderable. In everyday life, disruptive innovation is therefore generally feared because of its intrinsically unforeseeable nature. So much so that it is often difficult to define at first what its consequences will be. In this way, generally, a disruptive moment always stands out because of the fact that it establishes a very clear distinction between a before and an after. At the same time, disrupted people can just as easily be either intoxicated by this sudden discharge or resentful. In fact, when one is subjected to disruption against one’s will, it is not generally very well received. It is this negative disruptive dimension that is the most routinely remembered when this term is adapted to the study of human beings. Particularly in psychology, disruptivity generally expresses a behavioural problem that is manifested by clear signs such as hyperactivity, inattention and aggression. These are disturbing attitudes that give stigma to the “bad elements” throughout their school years.
EUREKA
The disruptive concept was mainly set forth in the writings of the economist Clayton Christensen, more specifically in his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (Harvard Business School Press) published in 1997. At the basis of his observation, the economist evokes the fundamental distinction that exists between disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation. According to him, a sustaining innovation is characterised by its capacity to consolidate the dominant consumption standards and values in a given place and time. In this sense, sustaining innovations generally serve the interests of companies that are already well established because they participate in improving results, without upsetting the models that are already in place. This progressive evolution generates a whole range of secondary innovations that participate, each in their own way, to maintaining a certain market equilibrium or consolidating the power of the companies in place. Inventions and innovations in all forms, therefore, constitute the sole driving force behind the evolution of western societies.
INNOVATION DISRUPTIVE
In their purest form, disruptive innovations are characterised by their radically innovative attributes, as well as by the path-breaking uses and habits they generate. By extension, we also talk about disruptive innovations to refer to commercial products or commonplace services because they are cheaper and often poorer quality than their competitors. At the same time, disruptive innovation provokes an overturning of consumption patterns that encourage one to accord more importance to criteria of simplicity, ease, manoeuvrability, and accessibility. In his analysis, Christiansen notes that those who love disruption are generally people who did not show any interest in a given product or service beforehand. This was because they felt that the latter was too expensive and/or useless. Disruptive innovation therefore creates a kind of rupture with habits that are commonly manifested in a particular field. A break that reveals the fringes of marginal or dormant consumers. In most cases, the traditional imperatives of performance, durability and comfort occupy subordinate positions. From the Walkman to MP3, from Skype to Easyjet and from the Formula 1 Hotel chain to digital photography, the list of examples of disruptive innovations seems endless.
ERZATZISM
Presented schematically, all disruptive innovations participate in the implementation of simpler and cheaper solutions that meet the expectations of users who up until that time did not show any interest in this type of product or service. Paradoxically, disruptive innovation, in spite of its fundamentally rudimentary, even outrageously “cheap” attributes, rapidly becomes indispensable. This peripheral invention is even capable, in certain cases, of supplanting the existing models. Considered from a commercial strategy viewpoint, disruptive innovation is therefore essentially a form of tactical substitution. This ersatz goes so far as to completely reconfigure the markets in which they erupt. In its purest variation, disruptive innovation therefore entails tremendous upheaval that can even lead to paradigm changes on a planetary level. This phenomenon is increasing more and more with the systemisation of the digital ersatzism of our daily lives. To a point where our contemporary history seems marked with the flip-flops caused by the myriad of technological innovations. To a point where idea of disruptivity hardly seems to bring fundamentally unheard-of inspiration to the field. Even more so because pure disruptive innovations, those whose radical consequences are without appeal, are few in number. In fact, since not all innovations have the same destiny as the Walkman or the Web, the attempts to produce anything disruptive often end up as unknown commercial failures.
However, if the operationality of this concept remains a point of discussion, what about its application to socio-cultural phenomena? A detour through recent London artistic headlines provides some clear insights in this regard; particularly by reviewing a few events commemorating, quite paradoxically, the thirtieth anniversary of the punk movement. A socio-cultural current that stands out because of its fundamentally discursive attitude.
ASTONISHED
Two recent large scale exhibitions hark back to the irreverent and transgressive spirit of the punk movement. On one hand, the “Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years” retrospective at the Barbican remembered the concomitant evolution of the current in England and the United States from 1974 to 1981. On the other hand, The Secret Public: The Last Days of the British Underground 1978-1988, at the ICA, focused essentially on the post-punk era in the UK. In this way, starting with a selection of artists and works that were symbolic of this era, the leitmotivs of these two exhibitions were more or less similar: emphasising the deeply original and federative nature of the movement’s musical and sartorial creations, while legitimising the disruptive impact of the punk aesthetic in the visual arts. More specifically its influence on contemporary art. Inaugurated exactly 30 days after the legendary concert by the Sex Pistols, Panic Attack! was articulated around the “Prostitution” exhibition launched by Genesis P-Orridge and its collective, COUM Transmissions. The four members of the group later became famous thanks to their musical performances as part of Throbbing Gristle. Inaugurated on 18 October 1976 at the ICA, this exhibition is remembered for almost causing a general uprising in the UK. The presentation of pornographic pictures, chains, syringes and used tampons aggravated the public to such a point that the art centre was obliged to remove the offending pieces. The outraged reactions soon made themselves heard. Indeed, a conservative representative attending a private viewing spoke out against this “sick, sadistic, obscene and diabolical outrage”. One wall of the exhibition was set apart to display the numerous virulent articles that instantly conferred exceptional notoriety on the show. By deliberately using outrageous provocation and due to the media repercussions it generated, Prostitution is often considered as a pivotal event in the rallying point between punk art and music. By misappropriating symbols, by exaggerating vices, fears and tensions of the day, punk aesthetic is essentially defined as an apology of transgression and triviality. A disruptive reconfiguration of the rubbish from our daily life that curiously echoes Thomas Edison, “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk”.
DELIBERATE INTERFERENCE
The punk movement defines itself as an experience of rupture, fracture, totally unheard-of. This not only with regard to the dominating society canons, but also with the operating logics for preceding youth sub-cultures such as mods, hippies and skinheads. In fact, counter-cultural movements that marked the 50s and 60s essentially proposed a head-on questioning of the values traditionally prized by consumer societies. In the hippie movement, for example, they resisted by proposing ideological concepts, alternative lifestyles or graphic conventions that were the direct opposites of dominating models. The combined influence of hallucinogenic drugs, free love and oriental philosophies participated in visibly modifying the graphic conventions of that time. However, these aesthetics did not take long to spread rapidly to all spheres of society. Punk nihilism was a different story, not really being part of counter-cultural resistance logic. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, it has been agreed that punk transformed an established ideological resistance, i.e. situationism, into an act of commercial conformity. The Sex Pistols consider themselves above all as a deliberate interference implemented by Malcolm McLaren to promote clothing lines designed by Vivienne Westwood. The media’s avidness for this Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle spread the phenomenon like an X-ray diffraction.
POSTRUPTIVITY
The Secret Public was the title of a committed fanzine published in 1978 by the artist Linder and the future iconic historian of the punk movement, Jon Savage. This publication was used as a symbolic milestone for The Secret Public / The Last Days of the British Underground exhibition which traced the creative emulation which spread through London until the end of the ‘80s. Or more precisely, until the Damien Hirst Freeze exhibition which totally transformed the existing artistic networks with the arrival of the Young British Artists. One of the distinguishing features of this exhibition was the omnipresence of an affirmed political positioning. Questions touching on race, sexuality or Thatcherite politics innervated, if you would, all the works presented. At the same time, for some people, this exhibition offered a retrospective look that retained a much romanticised point of view of cultural socialisation modes and the radical political commitment that was prevalent during the new wave in the UK. When it defines a social fact, a cultural event or an artistic work, a disruptive phenomenon does not become truly effective until it is measured against the repercussions it has caused. In this way, these two events are symbolic of the after the fact recognition procedure, i.e. postruptive, which take place in the cultural sector. Different from disruptive logic, which is immediately quantifiable in the economic sphere, the disruptive nature of a socio-cultural phenomenon, and more specifically an artistic phenomenon, is not clearly perceptible until after a given lapse in time. Speaking of postruptivity, we then put the emphasis on the historical perspective necessary to be able to evaluate the span of the shockwaves resulting from the brutality of spectacular explosions. Postruptivity expresses the inscribing of an event, an object or any other phenomenon, disruptive in the collective memory.
ACMÉ
Acme: n. Apex, highest point. Acme of a civilisation, a career. [MEDICINE] Stage of an illness at its highest degree of intensity.
The most insignificant objects that according to their use, and the interpretation grids and legitimisation procedures that are associated with them, can be defined as postruptors. These are objects that subsequently symbolise crucial paradigm changes in the way we act, see or think about the world around us. Regarding rapid consumption requirements, the main driving force behind the race for disruptive innovations, postruptivity is a goal that is hard to plan for. As to the question of knowing how to ensure this act of longevity, For the Love of God, which was recently shown at the White Cube in London, is certainly a pivotal work in the field. With its 8,601 diamonds (valued at £12 million) and an exorbitant price of £50 million this sumptuously disruptive skull constitutes a perfect allegory of decadent frenzy that presently affects contemporary art. To biz or not to biz.
Joël Vacheron (translated by Inox SA)