Journal articles on the topic 'Artistic decentralization'

This paper discusses temporal narratives and musical action, focusing on the decentralization trends in models, means, objects, knowledge and objectives of artistic creation on the Net. In a widespread cognitive environment, diachronic and spatial communication values have to be adapted. The development of linguistic flows, codified according to digital models, leads net users to interact in a different way. In a decentralized environment, many conditions for composing and listening to music may be subordinated to the conception of creative thought as a combination of recursive, connective, and systemic processes, which redefine not only the concept of musical object and sound space, but also that of music itself.

The relevance of cultural and educational activities to ensure the promotion of the Ukrainian Roztochchia region has been analyzed. In connection with the processes of decentralization, a number of problems arise with the passporting of objects of cultural heritage, innovations in document circulation, etc. Active military actions on the part of Russia lead to large‒scale destruction or complete destruction of the artistic heritage of certain regions of Ukraine. In the current conditions, measures for security, fixation, preservation and promotion will be of great importance in the cultural and artistic space both for a separate region and for the state as a whole. The need to capitalize the resources of cultural strategies has become especially acute during the 2022-2023 war, a time when the issue of heritage preservation is a priority at all levels of state formation. The opening of cross‒border road connections between Ukraine and Poland created favorable conditions for the development of tourism. This allows increasing tourist flows, especially from European countries to Lviv, and also requires the development of tourist infrastructure on both sides of the border: hotels, cafes, eco-stops, agro‒villages, etc. Cross‒border tourism has covered only the roadside (along the main transport arteries) part of the Roztochchia region, but the majority of artistic attractions, namely the heights of Roztochchia, remain outside the international tourist flows. The lack of land border crossings, information sources about tourist routes, insufficient provision and low standard of logistics services, especially from the Ukrainian side, lead to the leveling of cultural heritage and its promotion. International projects, competitions and grants will be important factors supporting the development of artistic processes in the region. High civic consciousness and the activity of cultural institutions will lead to significant positive changes in the issues of preservation and promotion of regional features, their identity and uniqueness.

Background. Since the 1960s Ukrainian artistic textile has been researched by S.Sydorovych, A.Zhuk, Ya.Zapasko, Z.Chehuseva, T.Pecheniuk, H.Kusko, Ye.Shymchuk, Z.Shulha, D.Bobiak, O.Yamborko, O.Nykorak, T.Lupii, O.Lukovska, O.Moisiuk studied regional features of folk weaving in history aspect. The fifth volume of The History of Ukrainian ornamental art published by M. T. Rylsky Institute of Art, Folklore Studies and Ethnology Institute of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is the important fundamental study where the researched issues are considered (2016). This volume presents the contribution of Rivne and Lviv artists Marta Tokar, Ivanna Tokar, Tetiana Lukashevych, and Olena Okhrymyk in general features. Separate aspects of Rivne artists’ creative work and school development are considered by A.Nikolaieva, N.Kosmolinska, O.Stashuk, I.Tokar etc. In modern times the complex research of Rivne art textile establishment and the issues of school development have not been presented that proves the importance of this paper. This study aims to outline social and cultural preconditions and features of Rivne Artistic Textile School establishment, give a short characteristic of its outstanding people creative work, and determine basic issues and ways of the development. The methodology is based on the complex approach including cultural, structural analysis and art study interpretation. This has provided the possibility using a system way to consider Rivne cloth art of the last decades as a complete art phenomenon. The scientific novelty concerns with regional characteristics of Rivne modern textile art. Results. Since last decades artistic textile having huge variety of its presentation has been becoming the field for new esthetic research and new point of view according to the surrounding on Rivne artistic map. This traditional ornamental branch is getting closer to pictorial art and in perfect manifestations it can even pretend to research modern social and human being conditions. The implementation and function of vocational art education were the important motivation to develop Rivne region artistic textile despite of weak institutional support especially in recent years. This paper studies beginnings and current issues of Rivne Cloth Art School becoming. New artistic senses are polished in the process of democratic competition through craftswomen creative ideas of different generations. This fact demonstrates the formation of Rivne Artistic Textile School. It is textile that is presented at international exhibitions among other kinds of arts including contribution of younger generation craftswomen. Simultaneously the author points out the issue of weak institutionalization of Ukrainian modern art on the local level. First of all it is revealed on the level of artifacts museification as the representation issue becomes the main one in the modern world. According to Rivne regional textile art the issue of centralized accumulation absence of modern works kept in artists’ studios is the most important one. This makes art utterances function more complicated for its research and interpretation. Artistic textile vocational school cooperation with Rivne Linen Factory (that existed till the 1990s) has interesting potential possibilities under the conditions of factors appearance that would let reanimate it or develop a new one. The author states that it can be the development of flax culture in Ukraine, expanding of enterprise ranges and other strategic structural initiatives. Conclusions. Rivne Artistic Textile School became the original branch of Lviv Arts and Crafts School. Focusing on regional folk weaving traditions Rivne modern craftswomen developed a new and unique artistic phenomenon characterized by the variety of its expressions in the semantic content and shape-created aspect. Rivne art-space analysis through the decentralization of artistic processes demonstrates that the leading role definitely belongs to art fabric in this process. Moreover this trend is powerful enough and artistic textile is a counterweight factor to the traditional painting centrism of Ukrainian art (including art-market). The next stage of the research aims to highlight imaginary system of separate art personalities. The study can be interpreted in such interdisciplinary aspects as cultural analysis, methodological points etc.

The author analyzes the transformations of Hellenic theologys content and forms in the epoch of early antique classics (1st half of the 5th century B.C.). The general orientation of such transformations is the generalization of mythological gods meanings into the abstract implications of the Absolute, which is not yet sacral in its full sense and not transcendent. Besides, this period is the end of the decentralization of consciousness. Cognitive limitations to the development of abstract conceptual thinking and the rational component of consciousness are removed. This processs main points transform mythology into artistic and aesthetic creativity (folklore, mythopoetic epic, etc.), religious consciousness, and theology. Rationalism is always critical. Critical rationalism inevitably leads to historicism. Therefore, the formation of a historical attitude strengthens at the sight of the critical approach. The world's mythological image is increasingly being questioned (first in parts, and then in general). Its content is being transferred to the past. Finally, the era of early classicism comes into play. It is a time when theology becomes a field of philosophical and theoretical reflection on myth and an area of its artistic and aesthetic experience. The most influential form of such an understanding of myth was the theater. The ancient theater served as a spiritual and practical form of ancient theology, a subject embodiment of theology in stage action.

The object of the study is the process of globalization, the subject of the study is its impact on the structure of the art market and national artistic cultures. Based on the idea of a dialogical cultural model, which was adhered to by V. Bybler and M. Bakhtin, the author justifies the use of the term "dialogue of cultures" to characterize the processes taking place in the space of the modern art market. Special attention in the study is paid to the analysis of its structural transformations: according to the author, inclusivity, which primarily consists in the decentralization of the internal structure of the art market, is a key characteristic that allows to periodize its development into classical and modern stages. A special contribution of the author of the study is an in-depth analysis of exhibition projects: "Magicians of the Earth" by J.-Y. Martin, as well as "Cities in Motion" by H.-W. Obrist and H. Hanru. It is established how these projects aroused the interest of Western collectors in the exotic and changed the share of representation in the art market of non-European art. The main conclusion is that the process of globalization of the art market acutely poses the problem of deformation of the perception of cultural heritage: the appeal of the Western world to traditional cultures in the forms of cultural and art tourism leads to fragmentation and differentiation of once integral national artistic cultures.

The subject of the research is theoretical and practical aspects of determining the financial and economic results of the activity of cultural and artistic institution. The purpose of the work is to determine the financial and economic results of the activities of cultural and artistic institution and to establish their positive dynamics due to the introduction of controlling tools in the systematic management of its development. The methodological basis of the article was both general scientific and special methods of scientific knowledge. The following methods were used: monographic; economic comparisons; statistical and economic, incl. formal and factor analysis; economic and mathematical; balance; graphic. Results of work. In the process of controlling in the system of activity of cultural and artistic institutions in the countryside and managing their development, financial and economic indicators and economic results occupy an important place. This is confirmed by the example of a rural house of culture. On the one hand, high and sustainable financial and economic results of its operation are important consequences of implementation, a kind of indicators of controlling efficiency. On the other hand, they are the financial basis for its further development and improvement. This is especially valuable in the context of decentralization of power, administrative-territorial reform, changing budgeting priorities for rural cultural institutions. The field of application of results. The conclusions and results of the article can be used in the educational process of economic faculties of higher educational establishments. They should be transferred for practical use in the management of socio-cultural enterprises. Conclusions. Factor analysis is important for enhancing the financial and economic performance of a rural club as a cultural and artistic institution. Economic factor analysis refers to the gradual transition from the initial factor system (performance indicator) to the final factor system, the disclosure of a complete set of direct quantitative factors that influence the change in the effective indicator. Their choice for the analysis of a particular indicator is made on the basis of financial and economic analysis of external factors. In this case, they usually proceed from the principle: the larger the set of factors under study, the more accurate the results of the analysis will be. Factor analysis can be done through questionnaires and be an important component of the controlling system.

After the end of the communist regime in Albania, culture and its institutions were the areas which had to suffer the most extreme damages and transformations. It was not only the way of thinking for a new way of managing, but its infrastructure as a whole, on a regular basis has suffered from considerable damages. In a different point of view, there was also a further considerable departure of individuals and the artistic community with the phenomenon of emigration. In these conditions, the first step that was taken was the drafting and implementation of legislation through which cultural and artistic institutions could operate, as well as free private initiatives. Firstly was first introduced the concept and were taken steps for drafting an intellectual property legislation, the law on cinematography, theater, cultural heritage, libraries and the book, in accordance with the recommendations of the expert representatives of the European Union authorities. Further, the first efforts were made by setting up working groups to draft the first strategic drafts on art and culture as well as medium and long-term budget projections. Consequently, the first effects of a cultural policy aimed at implementing a new administrative-legal platform were felt. This policy would firstly respect the principles of decentralization and secondly the cooperation with the homologous structures of the countries of the Balkan region and further with those of Europe and beyond. The various phases of the reform did not always brought the expected expectations with the projected objectives. As a result, the transition to art and culture institutions lasted somewhat longer than in different sectors of Albania’s socio-political development.

This article is about the artistic legacy of the famous monumental artist Grigory Avksentievich Dovzhenko, who lived and worked in the difficult and contradictory times of Ukrainian history and yet managed to preserve the identity of our culture in his works, perpetuate its signs in paintings, murals, mosaics, «Stone embroidered shirts». Studying local history, preserving cultural heritage sites, popularizing the historical past contributes to the formation of national and local identities, and gives impetus to the development of local communities. It is the community, its past, its distinctive identity, that is becoming the determining factor today, especially in the light of the processes of decentralization and preservation of the memory of generations. Life fate and creative heritage of G. Dovzhenko, a famous Ukrainian monumental artist, who devoted almost six decades to art. Each of his thoughts, every sketch, drawing, portrait, panel, still life is a continuation of eternal life, preservation of family memory. His creative heritage enriches today's and future generations. It must be remembered that the culture of every nation belongs to humanity, and our holy duty is to honor our cultural lights, be proud of them and popularize them, otherwise our awareness of ourselves as a nation will be impossible. Also during this period G. Dovzhenko addresses the topics of the national past. This is how the mosaic and fresco images of the times of Kievan Rus and Khmelnytskyi appear. Among the works of these years, the mosaic composition «Kiy, Schek, Choriv and their sister Lybid» is distinguished on the facade of the cinema «Rovesnik» in Kiev (1971), in which the artist managed to show the opto-color possibilities of smalt - the favorite material of ancient Ukrainian masters. G. Dovzhenko also portrays still lifes - bouquets of flowers in jugs, bread, fruits. But most often he paints flowering or covered with abundant fruit tree branches. These peculiar fragments of natural motifs are depicted by harmonious patterns on the canvas. G. Dovzhenko's artistic look reveals the organization of the subject world. The artist is constantly studying the laws and interconnections of natural forms. Hundreds of sketches of flowers and plants are of value to the attentive and skillful reproduction of form and color, the identification of logical structural conditionality of the structure, they are extremely interesting and further stylization, processing into decorative elements. This is a rare case in the practice of contemporary artists, when the artist does not use secondary material, but seeks to find and understand the laws of rhythm and symmetry, color plastics and structure. G. Dovzhenko in his work sought to embody a sense of gratitude for life. The artist was constantly experimenting, looking for different solutions of mosaic panels, based on the use of the best ancient traditions.

The Article is a part of a broad historical and literary problem of ‟Chekhov and his literary environment”. The paper under discussion is devoted to a comparative study of dramaturgical methods used by playwrights of the turn of the XIX‒XX centuries and the determination of the vector of the writers’ artistic search. The research subject is the system of structural and typological features such an element of dramaturgical methods as plot in the plays ‟The Cherry Orchard” by A. P. Chekhov, ‟Redemption” by I. N. Potapenko, “The Work of Life” by N. I. Timkovsky and ‟The Question” by A. S. Suvorin, the methods affiliation with a certain type of dramaturgical system (classical and ‟new drama”). The aim of the investigation is analysis of the features of the structure of the plot in selected plays, comparing them with the principles of classical drama and ‟new drama”, and comparing the findings among themselves. The main method used in the paper is the method of structural and typological comparison. The ideological and thematic unity of the plays, the interconnection of some motives, plot elements are revealed. It is proved that of all the plays considered, only the plot of Suvorin’s play ‟The Question” corresponds to the principles of classical drama, while elements of decentralization are already observed in it due to a certain independence of the secondary plot lines. The plot models of the plays ‟The Atonement” by Potapenko and ‟The Work of Life” by Timkovsky occupy an intermediate position between the classical and the ‟new drama”. In both plays, an ‟inner plot” appears. Unlike the aforementioned playwrights, Chekhov's plot model is fundamentally different from classical drama. The main principle of the organization of the plot of ‟The Cherry Orchard” is the decentralization of plot lines. The most important is the internal plot: a person in the flow of time. In addition, all the plays are united by an invariant plot reflecting the Russian reality of that time, connected with the fate of the noble estate mortgaged for debts.

The urgency of the scientific and pedagogical development of the pedagogical conditions of continuous students' design-training is connected with the necessity of formulating methodical features of the use of new forms and methods of teaching and control in the conditions of higher pedagogical education; systematization, streamlining and standardization of the process of independent design training of students; introduction of the principle of decentralization, democratization in the educational process management system. Based on the analysis of the research and experience of preparing the future teacher of technology, we have identified a number of conditions for continuous design training, among which the most important are the following: monitoring and correction of the level of readiness of future technology teachers to design and technological activities; technology of pedagogical assistance to the organization of continuous design training of students, based on the integration of design and rating technologies with the use of elements of personality development and innovative teaching methods; the formation of conscious self-regulation by students of their own educational and professional activities on the basis of unity of personal, artistic and technological components. Prospects for further exploration are the development of a model of a system of continuous design-training, which will take into account certain pedagogical conditions for the effectiveness of the organization of design training for future technology teachers in institutions of higher pedagogical education.

The subject of the study is theoretical and practical aspects of democratization of management and regulation of the development of enterprises of the socio-cultural sphere of Ukraine with the use of organizational and financial-economic instruments and mechanisms. The purpose of the work is to identify and address the challenges and problems of developing the socio-cultural sphere to improve the management and regulation of its enterprises and institutions on the basis of democratization in conditions of decentralization of power, European integration influences and using organizational and financial and economic instruments. Methodological basis of the article became as general scientific, and special methods of scientific knowledge. Were used methods: dialectical, monographic, historical, system-structural analysis and synthesis, problem and program-target approaches. Results of work. The article reveals that the decentralization of power in Ukraine and the pursuit of European standards of life place new demands on development, hence the management of national socio-cultural space. It has been established that the management of enterprises and organizations in the socio-cultural sphere should be based on the consistent democratization of the entire management system. To this end, the expediency of introducing the public-public model into the system of management of them, the involvement of social entrepreneurship instruments and social responsibility has been substantiated. The challenges and positive trends of the socio-cultural sphere development are revealed. New effective mechanisms, methods and tools for management, related to forecasting, designing and implementation of innovations, program-target planning in the mode of constant correction of goals and tasks and monitoring of socio-cultural space are proposed. The field of application of results. Conclusions and results of the article can be used in the educational-scientific process of the economic faculties of higher educational institutions. It is expedient to transfer them for practical use in the management of cultural and artistic institutions, enterprises of social infrastructure in the countryside. They also represent a practical interest in the work of rural communities and the development of rural areas. Conclusions. Democratization of the management of enterprises of socio-cultural sphere is carried out on the principles of decentralization of power, gradual formation of civil society, in accordance with the processes of European integration and in response to internal and external socio-economic challenges. At the same time, the latest methods, mechanisms and instruments of management and regulation should be applied. In their totality, the comprehensive implementation deserves programming and planning activities. It means the development of specific programs with a scientifically developed conceptual framework for the development of financially sustainable socio-cultural enterprises or activities. In the future, it is also necessary to develop criteria that will allow an assessment of the effectiveness of the implementation of these programs, provide options for their adverse development and remedial action in such cases. Executive activities in this context should include the creation of regulatory and legal networks and organizational structures that will allow for the unification of constructive processes of self-organization and specific management measures, the introduction of new mechanisms for the implementation of the potential of a program that forms relevant logistical, labor and financial and economic resources, information bases and innovations.

The target of this article is disclosing the same practically remarkedparticular traits, determined peculiar properties of process concerningartist’s self-actualization into synthetic spice of art for artistic culture ofthe second half of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st centuries. Thepurpose of proposed scientific disquisition is also delineating ofprofessionally necessary mechanism in reference to the most maximalactivity for liberation of individual potential, establishing of the specificlevel as touching a self-actualization of creative personality. The methodsof this investigation are forming as the result from including the series ofempirical approaches in the studying of the artist’s self-actualizationphenomenon into the context of art synthesis. The methods observationand generalization are applying in the first place, which discover thepractical traits of the self-actualization’s appearance, the self-expression ofcreative personal in the synthetic spice of art. The scientific newness ofrepresented investigative theme is conditioned by detection, the first of all,practical part of the artist’s self-actualization process into circulation fromsynthesis of culturally creative pallet of the contemporaneity.Conclusions. The particularity of artist’s self-actualization in the modernspice of multicultural synthesis has the bright expressive artisticallypractical and, in to the total, actively complex character, which engagesartistically performing confidence, emotionally sensual frankness ofcreative performing process and, certainly, conviction, in reference to theartistically creative act. Herewith, emphasize, that above-mentionedprocesses generate the high level of artist’s self-actualization only onsituation of creatively active accentuation of over-personal life categories,which bring to the condition of decentralization concerning the own „meˮ,to the generalization by creator-individual of over-personal existentpositions.

The purpose of this research was to analyze open-air mural painting museums in Uruguay as a model of tourism resilience, sustainability, and social development, being one of the first Latin American examples to demonstrate the ability to adapt to change and overcome external shocks through the creation of creative community landscapes. To do so, documentary research, photographic documentation, and field research were carried out in order to explore the opportunities of mural tourism in small locations in Uruguay. In the nineties, a new type of artistic production was created in Uruguay, initially characterized by its decentralization. This was somewhat of a revolution in the muralist field as, until this time, Montevideo had been the center of cultural tradition, considered the intellectual focus of the country, and had concentrated the largest number of murals. For this reason, the birth of new muralist nuclei in small rural enclaves, which traditionally had not had much access to culture and no link to muralism, is remarkable. Secondly, this new movement sought to diversify economic activity given the consequences of the severe economic crises and environmental catastrophes that were and are still prevalent in these areas. Therefore, these new creative landscapes were conceived as important examples of the resilience of cultural tourist destinations. The results emphasize that, until now, the idea of giving muralism a new use as a tool for local economic development had not been envisaged with reference to mural art in Uruguay. This new rethinking has given rise to the so-called Regionalization Processes of Uruguayan wall production. The most relevant cases are those developed in the municipalities of San Gregorio de Polanco (1993), Rosario (1994), and Pan de Azúcar (1998).

The concept of interpretation (as a procedure for determining the values of those abstractions that are used in the theorization of knowledge, in the process of developing an abstract model of the subject) is applicable to any forms of knowledge, including systems of religious knowledge, designing the ideal model of the subject of religious veneration. The author analyzes the epistemological features of theology as a form of spiritual culture, its formation in ancient culture. It is shown that the epistemological basis for overcoming mythological consciousness was the decentralization of thinking, i.e. development of the ability of consciousness in the construction of the image, the picture of the world to correct the position of the subject, to take into account the relativity of the reference system, from the standpoint of which the subject perceives the object and transforms it into an operational system of thinking. Decentration of thinking provided the overcoming of the subjective mental boundaries of the field, giving the thinking nature of universality. Historical stages and moments of this process - the transformation of mythology into forms of folk art, mythopoetic epic, in the form of religious consciousness. In line with such transformations of archaic consciousness, cultural and historical prerequisites of theology emergence were formed. They are represented in mythopoetic art (Homer, Hesiod, etc.), ancient mythography, early traditions of critical and rationalistic interpretation of the myth, etc. The article shows the formation of allegorical theology, which became possible in the era of individualization of artistic creativity, when the visible was the difference between the motive and the purpose of activity, creative idea and its embodiment, figuratively-poetic and rationally-conceptual ways of reflecting the world, when the image of reality and its personal meaning began to be realized as different States of consciousness. The main function of any theology is the interpretation of abstract models of the subject of religious veneration (the imaginary image of the supernatural).

The article is devoted to the human-geographical study of the basic network of cultural institutions of the Ternopil city territorial community. The parameters of the territory and settlement network of the community are considered, which are the determining conditions during the structuring of geospace. The legislative principles of creating a basic network of cultural institutions of the local level are analyzed. The modern basic network of cultural institutions of the Ternopil territorial community is a consequence of the reform of the cultural sphere and the implementation of the decentralization reform. It went through three stages of its organizational formation. The basic network of culture of the local level of the Ternopil territorial community includes 39 institutions. More than 56% of the network's facilities are located in the city of Ternopil. According to the form of ownership and organizational and legal form, they are divided into 9 communal institutions, 1 communal enterprise and 29 establishments that are directly in communal ownership. The component structure of the sphere of culture and art of the community is formed by the following types of institutions: club-type cultural institutions, libraries, art schools, orchestras and cinemas. Primary socio-cultural services of the basic network are provided by 13 club-type cultural institutions. They are represented by the palace of culture, houses of culture and clubs (branches). Library institutions are the most numerous in the system of the basic network, the share of which reaches 51%. Among all 20 institutions of the community, the main role in this area is given to the Ternopil city centralized library system. Primary art education is represented by 2 music schools and 1 art school. The only municipal enterprise in the field of cinematography is the Ternopil Film Commission. A special feature of the basic network of cultural institutions of the Ternopil community is the presence of two orchestras. A significant addition to the basic network of community cultural institutions are communal institutions engaged in similar or related activities. Governing bodies ensure the systematic functioning of institutions and the implementation of measures to implement a consistent cultural policy. The territorial organization of cultural institutions of the local level of the Ternopil city community is an orderly network, where the connections between them are manifested in the formation of various combinations. Within the community, the functioning of 6 cultural and artistic systems was identified, which are combined into three types of different hierarchical levels (1 urban, 5 basic and 5 primary). The geospatial specifics of the location of the elements of the basic network result in the indicators of providing the city and basic administrative-territorial units of the community with cultural and art institutions. They are sufficient to ensure the sustainable functioning of the network and the provision of socio-cultural services. In the context of the spread of innovation diffusion, the rural area of the community is cascaded into three suburban zones: near (up to 6 km), medium (7-17 km), remote (over 18 km). The first zone meets the criteria of the village of Kurivtsi, the second – Malashivtsi, Glyadky, Chernykhiv, Ivankivtsi, Pleskivtsi, Kobzarivka, the third – Horodyshche, Nosivts, Vertelka. Problems of the organization of rendering of cultural services are revealed: outdated material and technical base; outflow of highly qualified creative specialists; insufficient funding from the budget; conservative forms and methods of providing cultural services; the initial level of development of cultural and creative industries. An important feature of the network of institutions of the Ternopil community is the real prospects for its expansion and improvement of functioning through the opening of new modern institutions. An important area of constant activation of socio-cultural activities is the constant increase of various forms of cultural mobility and touring activities. Key words: institution, network, community, culture, art, city, geocultural space, decentralization.

Based upon the empirical background of professional and folk baroque icons represented in the Radomysl Castle Museum’s exhibitions, this article reveals the compositional, artistic and ideological characteristics of the Ukrainian baroque icon painting. The coincidence of its images and ideals with the national character and public aspirations of Ukrainians is also described. It is due to this that the Ukrainian baroque icon painting (both professional and folk) in the time of long statelessness and cultural decentralization became the main means of rendering collective reminiscences that are basic for the preservation of ethnic and cultural identity, and social ideals with them. The latter transformed over time into mental models that unconsciously determined the ideological and value priorities of Ukrainians. They, as evidenced by the compositional specification of the baroque icons presented in the Radomysl Castle Museum’s collection, were much influenced by the ideas of the world’s transformation and achieving the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through the ascetic activity of heroes, which was basic for the baroque worldview. For a man of the “Baroque era,” such heroes were not only Orthodox saints, but also religious and political figures. Moreover, it was assumed that they could even ignore the demands of Christian moralists for the sake of promoting the specific vital interests of the people. Their ascetic activity was considered one of the main prerequisites for the transformation of the world, the prototype of which was the Mother of God. For Ukrainians, she was not only a tireless patron for disadvantaged and suffering ones, but also a prototype of the selfless love that would rule the world (“the holy Ukrainian land”), as the result of its transformation. The sincere hope of Ukrainians for the protection of saints, combined with an unshakable faith in the divine “omnipresence” and the fullness of the whole world with God’s wisdom led to the establishment of ontological optimism in the Ukrainian consciousness. This means the belief in the ultimate overcoming of all life obstacles without personal efforts. Ideas and mental models formed and transmitted by Ukrainian baroque icon painting, due to the spiritual leaders of the 19th century’s national revival (with the absolute primacy of Taras Shevchenko and his both literature and art heritage) acquired secular features. They continued to determine the way of thinking and behavior of Ukrainians. Even today, they sincerely believe that the renewal of the world and the formation of new and just order does not require any personal effort and is to be achieved by the forces of some heroes they would call.

The culture has always been funded residually. And now funding continues to be made available to address the immediate needs of communities. Subventions received by communities as part of the reform were aimed at road mending, renovating municipal equipment, water suppling, and upgrading. As a result, it is impossible to maintain cultural institutions and provide quality cultural services to the population in less well-off communities. This may result in depressed territories being left without cultural facilities, cultural programs and projects. Another problem that exists in villages, towns and small towns is the so-called «staff shortage». Low wages and lack of professional prospects in rural areas don’t help involvement of experts to work for positions in the field of culture. In the more capable ATCs, as well as in the communities that have become the centers of the community, there is often at least a team of the director, the artistic director, the circle leaders who organize the cultural life in the community. But in small villages, in houses of culture, the enthusiasm of only one person who has worked in this position all his life is still held. This person is at the same time a director, artistic director, head of all circles, and sometimes a technical worker. According to R. Yu. Mylian, increased attention to solving problems of the sociocultural development of rural settlements will contribute to the preservation and development of cultural institutions in rural areas, prevent the outflow of the working and most educated population, especially young people, and will eventually strengthen the sustainable development potential of Ukraine as a whole. The organization and holding of mass cultural events in rural areas is an effective means of strengthening the competitiveness of rural areas, enhances the development of cultural interregional and cross-border cooperation, event-tourism and has a positive impact on the branding of rural settlements as tourist attractions. To address the above issues, is invited to identify an approach whereby a State, acting by the Culture Ministry, will develop standards for the minimum volume and quality of cultural services, compliance with which will be mandatory for local governments in communities. This may occur by defining and establishing a set of basic services guaranteed by the State and financed from the State budget. For the normal functioning of State culture, it is necessary to establish a new concept of these institutions activities in the ATC, to provide for tax exemption by legal acts and to clearly define the types of services provided by cultural activity.

One of the main natural obstacles of Western-privileged globalization of cultures is the world’s systems of productivity in most fields that tend to follow, if not obey, the Western-origin categorizing forces. The many world networks of parallel yet intertwined ways of thinking and of producing knowledge - and in this case, making art - in its most diverse sense preserves a striking diversity. In this sense, when categorization becomes loosened, the boundary becomes blurred and rationality becomes flexibilized in a particular cultural background and a specific curating act. The fluidity of meanings in a Westernen-like perspective within the essence of organizational forces and lines thus offers a poetics that in turn (re-)defines art making, both art and making, in its very own right. Advocating for knowledge production decentralization, Yipei Lee, the co-curator of internet artist residency “Flaneur in the insular cities: island ecology” (漫遊島城——島嶼生態學), is very much the case of this poetics. Putting it in a less utopian wording, Lee’s co-curation offers a chance to funding entities, research-based artists and curators themselves to build a multifying dimension of co-centralities in art making. This poetics of playing with meanings in art making itself is marked by the project’s all-encompassing interrelations and interactions among curators and artists rhizome-like webs of ideas that have been materialized during the ongoing process of this online residency: Participating individuals are supposed to do flânerie as their own initiatives within and without some certain universality of insularity and its ecologicality as main themes of their artistic research. This essay aims at exploring, if not attempts to offer an insight on how the elasticity and flexibleness of to-be-reappropriated meanings in this particular case can serve as an alternative way of decentralization, while giving a very brief overview about the event.While Lee as an independent curator offers necessary empirical evidence for the writing of this essay, Cheong Kin Man, as a visual anthropologist, tries to give third-party commentaries and observations on it.

The article manifests and analyzes the process of decentration of the Author, which corresponds to a number of trends, such as: decentration of the subject, dividualization, decentralization of information systems, etc., which determine contemporary transformations of the Lifeworld of a human, who appears precisely as a decentralized, multilayered, split, multiple being. It is noted that the model of authorship, which was constituted according to the concept of a centered/holistic subject/individual, which, in particular, is embodied in copyright, needs to be reconsidered. The meaning of such a model, which is conceptualized in the figure of "authenticity of an authoritative author", is reduced to the creation of Surplus Value with behalf of the author of the product/work/goods. The article presents the stages of decentration of the Author, authority and authenticity, which are personified by the figures of S. Kierkegaard, M. Duchamp, and R. Stallman. For Kierkegaard, it is fundamental to separate the function of the author from authority and the formation of existence/singularity, which, in particular, is embodied in his use of pseudonyms. Duchamp problematizes the author as a producer of a product, contrasting him with the practice of using ready-made objects, and contrasts the tradition of the author's signature with the multiplication of names/signatures. Duchamp exposes the exploitative essence of work even in relation to artistic creativity, manifesting as an alternative to laziness/"lazy activity", which allows shifting the emphasis from the production of things to the process of becoming subjectivity. In the end, the author as integrity and unity loses its meaning in the context of the development of contemporary technologies and network communication. Stallman presents a strategy of friendly exchange of free software instead of selling it based on copyright (intellectual property). This is what should increase productive activity and free up time, and in the long run, creativity should hardly be distinguished from laziness. These three examples testify to the possibility and necessity of overcoming the repressive component of authorship and copyright as a way of controlling/restricting human life, which is not a totality, does not have substantial authenticity, does not require authority, and does not focus on authorship.

Developments in computer and communication technologies, which constitute the starting point of concepts such as decentralization, virtuality, simulation, augmented reality and metaverse, have also brought new forms of expression and designs in art to the agenda. In addition to the decentralized data architecture and metaverse areas that emerged in parallel with the development of network technologies, applications that increase the user's interaction and beleaguered experience such as virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality have increased their effectiveness in this field. The metaverse spaces that emerge with the cooperation of software, art and architecture offer their users a more similar life simulation of natural life through augmented reality vehicles or screens. Here, users can perform new experiences for artistic production and consumption as well as daily life practices such as socialization and communication. Metaverse spaces, which include the design of a three-dimensional virtual universe that can be supported by augmented reality, are free from all the constraints of the real world as a cinematic plateau. It is seen as a great advantage that the real film set can create a cinematic work without expensive equipment such as cameras, lights, and sound away from all the negativities of the natural shooting conditions. The fact that the production, distribution and screening of cinema works can be realized within this field brings a new understanding of decentralized cinema to the agenda. Decentralized cinema, which has begun to rise in the expanding virtual geography of the metaverse virtual space with its advantages such as virtual characters and scenes and creative space fictions, is an art form worth examining. This study focuses on the possible future transformations of cinema in terms of production and representation in the context of the relationship of virtual and augmented reality technologies with developing metaverse areas. The emergence of a new cinematic ecology; The opportunities and obstacles it provides to producers are examined with the philosophical criticism method through concepts such as virtual and augmented reality, web 3.0, metaverse in terms of audience experiences it offers for screening. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the metaverse area has many advantages in terms of the production of cinema works, democratization of the production and distribution of works, digital privacy and security for metaverse artists, and recognition of ownership for digital works of art.

IntroductionThe 2009 American film Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine, was released at a time when the hipster had become a ubiquitous concept, entering into the common vernacular of numerous cultures throughout the world, and gaining significant press, social media and academic attention (see Žižek; Arsel and Thompson; Greif et al.; Stahl; Ouellette; Reeve; Schiermer; Maly and Varis). Trash Humpers emerged soon after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis triggered Occupy movements in numerous cities, aided by social media platforms, reported on by blogs such as Gawker, and stylized by multi-national youth-subculture brands such as Vice, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and a plethora of localised variants.Korine’s film, which is made to resemble found VHS footage of old-aged vandals, epitomises the ironic, retro stylizations and “counterculture-meets-kitsch” aesthetics so familiar to hipster culture. As a creative stereotype from 1940s and ‘50s jazz and beatnik subcultures, the hipster re-emerged in the twenty-first century as a negative embodiment of alternative culture in the age of the Internet. As well as plumbing the recent past for things not yet incorporated into contemporary marketing mechanisms, the hipster also signifies the blurring of irony and authenticity. Such “outsiderness as insiderness” postures can be regarded as a continuation of the marginality-from-the-centre logic of cool capitalism that emerged after World War Two. Particularly between 2007 and 2015, the post-postmodern concept of the hipster was a resonant cultural trope in Western and non-Western cultures alike, coinciding with the normalisation of the new digital terrain and the establishment of mobile social media as an integral aspect of many people’s daily lives. While Korine’s 79-minute feature could be thought of as following in the schlocky footsteps of the likes of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2006), it is decidedly more arthouse, and more attuned to the influence of contemporary alternative media brands and independent film history alike – as if the love child of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) and Vice Video, the latter having been labelled as “devil-may-care hipsterism” (Carr). Upon release, Trash Humpers was described by Gene McHugh as “a mildly hip take on Jackass”; by Mike D’Angelo as “an empty hipster pose”; and by Aaron Hillis as either “the work of an insincere hipster or an eccentric provocateur”. Lacking any semblance of a conventional plot, Trash Humpers essentially revolves around four elderly-looking protagonists – three men and a woman – who document themselves with a low-quality video camera as they go about behaving badly in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, where Korine still lives. They cackle eerily to themselves as they try to stave off boredom, masturbating frantically on rubbish bins, defecating and drinking alcohol in public, fellating foliage, smashing televisions, playing ten-pin bowling, lighting firecrackers and telling gay “hate” jokes to camera with no punchlines. In one purposefully undramatic scene half-way through the film, the humpers are shown in the aftermath of an attack on a man wearing a French maid’s outfit; he lies dead in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor with a hammer at his feet. The humpers are consummate “bad” performers in every sense of the term, and they are joined by a range of other, apparently lower-class, misfits with whom they stage tap dance routines and repetitively sing nursery-rhyme-styled raps such as: “make it, make it, don’t break it; make it, make it, don’t fake it; make it, make it, don’t take it”, which acts as a surrogate theme song for the film. Korine sometimes depicts his main characters on crutches or in a wheelchair, and a baby doll is never too far away from the action, as a silent and Surrealist witness to their weird, sinister and sometimes very funny exploits. The film cuts from scene to scene as if edited on a video recorder, utilising in-house VHS titling sequences, audio glitches and video static to create the sense that one is engaging voyeuristically with a found video document rather than a scripted movie. Mainstream AlternativesAs a viewer of Trash Humpers, one has to try hard to suspend disbelief if one is to see the humpers as genuine geriatric peeping Toms rather than as hipsters in old-man masks trying to be rebellious. However, as Korine’s earlier films such as Gummo (1997) attest, he clearly delights in blurring the line between failure and transcendence, or, in this case, between pretentious art-school bravado and authentic redneck ennui. As noted in a review by Jeannette Catsoulis, writing for the New York Times: “Much of this is just so much juvenile posturing, but every so often the screen freezes into something approximating beauty: a blurry, spaced-out, yellow-green landscape, as alien as an ancient photograph”. Korine has made a career out of generating this wavering uncertainty in his work, polarising audiences with a mix of critical, cinema-verité styles and cynical exploitations. His work has consistently revelled in ethical ambiguities, creating environments where teenagers take Ritalin for kicks, kill cats, wage war with their families and engage in acts of sexual deviancy – all of which are depicted with a photographer’s eye for the uncanny.The elusive and contradictory aspects of Korine’s work – at once ugly and beautiful, abstract and commercial, pessimistic and nostalgic – are evident not just in films such as Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy (1999) and Mister Lonely (2007) but also in his screenplay for Kids (1995), his performance-like appearances on The Tonight Show with David Letterman (1993-2015) and in publications such as A Crackup at the Race Riots (1998) and Pass the Bitch Chicken (2001). As well as these outputs, Korine is also a painter who is represented by Gagosian Gallery – one of the world’s leading art galleries – and he has directed numerous music videos, documentaries and commercials throughout his career. More than just update of the traditional figure of the auteur, Korine, instead, resembles a contemporary media artist whose avant-garde and grotesque treatments of Americana permeate almost everything he does. Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids when he was just 19, and subsequently built his reputation on the paradoxical mainstreaming of alternative culture in the 1990s. This is exemplified by the establishment of music and film genres such “alternative” and “independent”; the popularity of the slacker ethos attributed to Generation X; the increased visibility of alternative press zines; the birth of grunge in fashion and music; and the coining of “cool hunting” – a bottom-up market research phenomenon that aimed to discover new trends in urban subcultures for the purpose of mass marketing. Key to “alternative culture”, and its related categories such as “indie” and “arthouse”, is the idea of evoking artistic authenticity while covertly maintaining a parasitic relationship with the mainstream. As Holly Kruse notes in her account of the indie music scenes of the 1990s, which gained tremendous popularity in the wake of grunge bands such as Nirvana: without dominant, mainstream musics against which to react, independent music cannot be independent. Its existence depends upon dominant music structures and practices against which to define itself. Indie music has therefore been continually engaged in an economic and ideological struggle in which its ‘outsider’ status is re-examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical practices. (Kruse 149)Alternative culture follows a similar, highly contentious, logic, appearing as a nebulous, authentic and artistic “other” whose exponents risk being entirely defined by the mainstream markets they profess to oppose. Kids was directed by the artist cum indie-director Larry Clark, who discovered Korine riding his skateboard with a group of friends in New York’s Washington Square in the early 1990s, before commissioning him to write a script. The then subcultural community of skating – which gained prominence in the 1990s amidst the increased visibility of “alternative sports” – provides an important backdrop to the film, which documents a group of disaffected New York teenagers at a time of the Aids crisis in America. Korine has been active in promoting the DIY ethos, creativity and anti-authoritarian branding of skate culture since this time – an industry that, in its attempts to maintain a non-mainstream profile while also being highly branded, has become emblematic of the category of “alternative culture”. Korine has undertaken commercial projects with an array skate-wear brands, but he is particularly associated with Supreme, a so-called “guerrilla fashion” label originating in 1994 that credits Clark and other 1990s indie darlings, and Korine cohorts, Chloë Sevigny and Terry Richardson, as former models and collaborators (Williams). The company is well known for its designer skateboard decks, its collaborations with prominent contemporary visual artists, its hip-hop branding and “inscrutable” web videos. It is also well known for its limited runs of new clothing lines, which help to stoke demand through one-offs – blending street-wear accessibility with the restricted-market and anti-authoritarian sensibility of avant-garde art.Of course, “alternative culture” poses a notorious conundrum for analysis, involving highly subjective demarcations of “mainstream” from “subversive” culture, not to mention “genuine subversion” from mere “corporate alternatives”. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, the roots of alternative culture lie in the Western tradition of the avant-garde and the “aesthetic gaze” that developed in the nineteenth century (Field 36). In analysing the modernist notion of advanced cultural practice – where art is presented as an alternative to bourgeois academic taste and to the common realm of cultural commodities – Bourdieu proposed a distinction between two types of “fields”, or logics of cultural production. Alternative culture follows what Bourdieu called “the field of restricted production”, which adheres to “art for art’s sake” ideals, where audiences are targeted as if like-minded peers (Field 50). In contrast, the “field of large-scale production” reflects the commercial imperatives of mainstream culture, in which goods are produced for the general public at large. The latter field of large-scale production tends to service pre-established markets, operating in response to public demand. Furthermore, whereas success in the field of restricted production is often indirect, and latent – involving artists who create niche markets without making any concessions to those markets – success in the field of large-scale production is typically more immediate and quantifiable (Field 39). Here we can see that central to the branding of “alternative culture” is the perceived refusal to conform to popular taste and the logic of capitalism more generally is. As Supreme founder James Jebbia stated about his brand in a rare interview: “The less known the better” (Williams). On this, Bourdieu states that, in the field of restricted production, the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies are inversed to create a “loser wins” scenario (Field 39). Profit and cultural esteem become detrimental attributes in this context, potentially tainting the integrity and marginalisation on which alternative products depend. As one ironic hipster t-shirt puts it: “Nothing is any good if other people like it” (Diesel Sweeties).Trash HipstersIn abandoning linear narrative for rough assemblages of vignettes – or “moments” – recorded with an unsteady handheld camera, Trash Humpers positions itself in ironic opposition to mainstream filmmaking, refusing the narrative arcs and unwritten rules of Hollywood film, save for its opening and closing credits. Given Korine’s much publicized appreciation of cinema pioneers, we can understand Trash Humpers as paying homage to independent and DIY film history, including Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton (1973), Andy Warhol’s and Paul Morrissey’s Lonesome Cowboys (1967) and Trash (1970), and John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), all of which jubilantly embraced the “bad” aesthetic of home movies. Posed as fantasized substitutions for mainstream movie-making, such works were also underwritten by the legitimacy of camp as a form of counter-culture critique, blurring parody and documentary to give voice to an array of non-mainstream and counter-cultural identities. The employment of camp in postmodern culture became known not merely as an aesthetic subversion of cultural mores but also as “a gesture of self-legitimation” (Derrida 290), its “failed seriousness” regarded as a critical response to the specific historical problem of being a “culturally over-saturated” subject (Sontag 288).The significant difference between Korine’s film and those of his 1970s-era forbears is precisely the attention he pays to the formal aspects of his medium, revelling in analogue editing glitches to the point of fetishism, in some cases lasting as long as the scenes themselves. Consciously working out-of-step with the media of his day, Trash Humpers in imbued with nostalgia from its very beginning. Whereas Smith, Eggleston, Warhol, Morrissey and Waters blurred fantasy and documentary in ways that raised the social and political identities of their subjects, Korine seems much more interested in “trash” as an aesthetic trope. In following this interest, he rightfully pays homage to the tropes of queer cinema, however, he conveniently leaves behind their underlying commentaries about (hetero-) normative culture. A sequence where the trash humpers visit a whorehouse and amuse themselves by smoking cigars and slapping the ample bottoms of prostitutes in G-strings confirms the heterosexual tenor of the film, which is reiterated throughout by numerous deadpan gay jokes and slurs.Trash Humpers can be understood precisely in terms of Korine’s desire to maintain the aesthetic imperatives of alternative culture, where formal experimentation and the subverting of mainstream genres can provide a certain amount of freedom from explicated meaning, and, in particular, from socio-political commentary. Bourdieu rightly points out how the pleasures of the aesthetic gaze often manifest themselves curiously as form of “deferred pleasure” (353) or “pleasure without enjoyment” (495), which corresponds to Immanuel Kant’s notion of the disinterested nature of aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic dispositions posed in the negative – as in the avant-garde artists who mined primitive and ugly cultural stereotypes – typically use as reference points “facile” or “vulgar” (393) working-class tropes that refer negatively to sensuous pleasure as their major criterion of judgment. For Bourdieu, the pleasures provided by the aesthetic gaze in such instances are not sensual pleasures so much as the pleasures of social distinction – signifying the author’s distance from taste as a form of gratification. Here, it is easy to see how the orgiastic central characters in Trash Humpers might be employed by Korine for a similar end-result. As noted by Jeremiah Kipp in a review of the film: “You don't ‘like’ a movie like Trash Humpers, but I’m very happy such films exist”. Propelled by aesthetic, rather than by social, questions of value, those that “get” the obscure works of alternative culture have a tendency to legitimize them on the basis of the high-degree of formal analysis skills they require. For Bourdieu, this obscures the fact that one’s aesthetic “‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education” – a privileged mode of looking, estranged from those unfamiliar with the internal logic of decoding presupposed by the very notion of “aesthetic enjoyment” (2).The rhetorical priority of alternative culture is, in Bourdieu’s terms, the “autonomous” perfection of the form rather than the “heteronomous” attempt to monopolise on it (Field 40). However, such distinctions are, in actuality, more nuanced than Bourdieu sometimes assumed. This is especially true in the context of global digital culture, which makes explicit how the same cultural signs can have vastly different meanings and motivations across different social contexts. This has arguably resulted in the destabilisation of prescriptive analyses of cultural taste, and has contributed to recent “post-critical” advances, in which academics such as Bruno Latour and Rita Felski advocate for cultural analyses and practices that promote relationality and attachment rather than suspicious (critical) dispositions towards marginal and popular subjects alike. Latour’s call for a move away from the “sledge hammer” of critique applies as much to cultural practice as it does to written analysis. Rather than maintaining hierarchical oppositions between authentic versus inauthentic taste, Latour understands culture – and the material world more generally – as having agency alongside, and with, that of the social world.Hipsters with No AlternativeIf, as Karl Spracklen suggests, alternativism is thought of “as a political project of resistance to capitalism, with communicative oppositionality as its defining feature” (254), it is clear that there has been a progressive waning in relevance of the category of “alternative culture” in the age of the Internet, which coincides with the triumph of so-called “neoliberal individualism” (258). To this end, Korine has lost some of his artistic credibility over the course of the 2000s. If viewed negatively, icons of 1990s alternative culture such as Korine can be seen as merely exploiting Dada-like techniques of mimetic exacerbation and symbolic détournement for the purpose of alternative, “arty” branding rather than pertaining to a counter-hegemonic cultural movement (Foster 31). It is within this context of heightened scepticism surrounding alternative culture that the hipster stereotype emerged in cultures throughout the world, as if a contested symbol of the aesthetic gaze in an era of neoliberal identity politics. Whatever the psychological motivations underpinning one’s use of the term, to call someone a hipster is typically to point out that their distinctive alternative or “arty” status appears overstated; their creative decisions considered as if a type of bathos. For detractors of alternative cultural producers such as Korine, he is trying too hard to be different, using the stylised codes of “alternative” to conceal what is essentially his cultural and political immaturity. The hipster – who is rarely ever self-identified – re-emerged in the 2000s to operate as a scapegoat for inauthentic markers of alternative culture, associated with men and women who appear to embrace Realpolitik, sincerity and authentic expressions of identity while remaining tethered to irony, autonomous aesthetics and self-design. Perhaps the real irony of the hipster is the pervasiveness of irony in contemporary culture. R. J Magill Jnr. has argued that “a certain cultural bitterness legitimated through trenchant disbelief” (xi) has come to define the dominant mode of political engagement in many societies since the early 2000s, in response to mass digital information, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and the climate of suspicion produced by information about terrorism threats. He analyses the prominence of political irony in American TV shows including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Simpsons, South Park, The Chappelle Show and The Colbert Report but he also notes its pervasiveness as a twenty-first-century worldview – a distancing that “paradoxically and secretly preserves the ideals of sincerity, honesty and authenticity by momentarily belying its own appearance” (x). Crucially, then, the utterance “hipster” has come to signify instances when irony and aesthetic distance are perceived to have been taken too far, generating the most disdain from those for whom irony, aesthetic discernment and cultural connoisseurship still provide much-needed moments of disconnection from capitalist cultures drowning in commercial hyperbole and grave news hype. Korine himself has acknowledged that Spring Breakers (2013) – his follow-up feature film to Trash Humpers – was created in response to the notion that “alternative culture”, once a legitimate challenge to mainstream taste, had lost its oppositional power with the decentralization of digital culture. He states that he made Spring Breakers at a moment “when there’s no such thing as high or low, it’s all been exploded. There is no underground or above-ground, there’s nothing that’s alternative. We’re at a point of post-everything, so it’s all about finding the spirit inside, and the logic, and making your own connections” (Hawker). In this context, we can understand Trash Humpers as the last of the Korine films to be branded with the authenticity of alternative culture. In Spring Breakers Korine moved from the gritty low-fi sensibility of his previous films and adopted a more digital, light-filled and pastel-coloured palette. Focussing more conventionally on plot than ever before, Spring Breakers follows four college girls who hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. Critic Michael Chaiken noted that the film marks a shift in Korine’s career, from the alternative stylings of the pre-Internet generation to “the cultural heirs [of] the doomed protagonists of Kids: nineties babies, who grew up with the Internet, whose sensibilities have been shaped by the sweeping technological changes that have taken place in the interval between the Clinton and Obama eras” (33).By the end of the 2000s, an entire generation came of age having not experienced a time when the obscure films, music or art of the past took more effort to track down. Having been a key participant in the branding of alternative culture, Korine is in a good position to recall a different, pre-YouTube time – when cultural discernment was still caught up in the authenticity of artistic identity, and when one’s cultural tastes could still operate with a certain amount of freedom from sociological scrutiny. Such ideas seem a long way away from today’s cultural environments, which have been shaped not only by digital media’s promotion of cultural interconnection and mass information, but also by social media’s emphasis on mobilization and ethical awareness. ConclusionI should reiterate here that is not Korine’s lack of seriousness, or irony, alone that marks Trash Humpers as a response to the scepticism surrounding alternative culture symbolised by the figure of the hipster. It is, rather, that Korine’s mock-documentary about juvenile geriatrics works too hard to obscure its implicit social commentary, appearing driven to condemn contemporary capitalism’s exploitations of youthfulness only to divert such “uncool” critical commentaries through unsubtle formal distractions, visual poetics and “bad boy” avant-garde signifiers of authenticity. Before being bludgeoned to death, the unnamed man in the French maid’s outfit recites a poem on a bridge amidst a barrage of fire crackers let off by a nearby humper in a wheelchair. Although easily overlooked, it could, in fact, be a pivotal scene in the film. Spoken with mock high-art pretentions, the final lines of the poem are: So what? Why, I ask, why? Why castigate these creatures whose angelic features are bumping and grinding on trash? Are they not spawned by our greed? Are they not our true seed? Are they not what we’ve bought for our cash? We’ve created this lot, of the ooze and the rot, deliberately and unabashed. Whose orgiastic elation and one mission in creation is to savagely fornicate TRASH!Here, the character’s warning of capitalist overabundance is drowned out by the (aesthetic) shocks of the fire crackers, just as the stereotypical hipster’s ethical ideals are drowned out by their aesthetic excess. The scene also functions as a metaphor for the humpers themselves, whose elderly masks – embodiments of nostalgia – temporarily suspend their real socio-political identities for the sake of role-play. It is in this sense that Trash Humpers is too enamoured with its own artifices – including its anonymous “boys club” mentality – to suggest anything other than the aesthetic distance that has come to mark the failings of the “alternative culture” category. In such instances, alternative taste appears as a rhetorical posture, with Korine asking us to gawk knowingly at the hedonistic and destructive pleasures pursued by the humpers while factoring in, and accepting, our likely disapproval.ReferencesArsel, Zeynep, and Craig J. Thompson. “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.5 (2011): 791-806.Bourdieu, Pierre. 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