POST-IRONY.

On art after irony

Johannes M. Hedinger, 2014

Post-irony, the whole new era to come. And if I'm right, everybody wins.
Alex Shakar, 2001
Post-irony means total imaginative and creative freedom.
Com&Com, 2008
The age of irony is over. We have grown tired of giving knowing winks, indulging in
sophisticated questioning and adding extra layers of irony. Following a final ironic climax as
the sneering sword of the post-modernists, an ironic standpoint is now used to conceal truths,
side-step problems and indulge in all kinds of idiocy to indicate that it is not to be taken
seriously. Irony is degenerating into a kind of disclaimer of liability an escape manoeuvre
that tries to wriggle out of any responsibility. Now, though, people are seeking to return to an
existence that is unfractured and direct and in which things are what they appear to be. They
allow themselves to feel closeness, to have emotions; they assume responsibility. The
distancing effect of irony does not permit this in any meaningful sense.
From irony to post-irony
Signs of post-irony were already being glimpsed in the 1990s, such as in David Foster
Wallace's essay E Unibus Pluram (1993), in which he drew comparisons between postmodern literature and the US television industry. He argued that both had decreased their
vulnerability through the use of self-referencing irony, the idea being that self-deprecation
protects against ridicule: "Irony tyrannises us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is
at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down". It was
the post-modern dyed-in-the-wool ironist Wallace of all people who, almost 20 years ago,
visualised an embryonic post-ironic world: "The next real literary "rebels" in this country
might well emerge as some weird bunch of "anti-rebels", born oglers who dare to back away
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from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse single-entendre values.
Who treat old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and
conviction".1
Jedediah Purdy's book For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America
Today2 (1999) also has a bearing on the issue. Purdy's plea for a re-politicisation of the public
attracted a great deal of attention; it also drew criticism for its perceived naivety. It was
interpreted as a general attack on the culture of irony in the USA, which Purdy saw as
promoting public disengagement in favour of isolated individualism shorn of all
responsibility: "We practise a form of irony insistently doubtful of the qualities that would
make us take another person seriously; the integrity of personality, sincere motivation, the
idea that opinions are more than symptoms of fear or desire. We are wary of hope, because
we see little that can support it. Believing in nothing much, especially not in people, is a point
of vague pride, and conviction can seem embarrassingly nave".3
While Foster Wallace's essay remains essentially ironic in tone and equivocal, Purdy's
language is straightforward. He calls openly for a return, as it were, to the moral integrity of
the individual and to social responsibility and engaged environmental awareness. By
expressing hopes, Purdy runs the risk of having them dashed and being branded a spoil-sport.
The term "post-irony" was first coined two years later by another writer, also American. Set
against a backdrop of trend spotting and commercialism, Alex Shakar's debut novel The
Savage Girl (2001)4 introduces two interesting central ideas: "paradessence" ("every product
has this paradoxical essence. Two opposing desires that it can promise to satisfy
simultaneously"), and "post-irony", which Shakar explains as the third phase of the consumer
society (following the pre-ironic phase of the 1950s and the ironic phase of the 1980s and
1990s). In the story, irony has degenerated into the core stylistic device of advertising, as a
result of which it has lost its oppositional force. Through "ironic earnestness"5, however, this
handicap is countered by ever-present doubt. Not only is the phenomenon of doubt about
doubt extrapolated to the era of post-irony, post-irony itself is even propagandised as a new
trend and marketing strategy. "Post-irony, the whole new era to come. And if I'm right,
everybody wins".6
Just how quickly this new post-ironic era would take to materialise is something neither
Foster Wallace nor Purdy nor Shakar could foresee: the latter's book was launched the very
day7 the Twin Towers in New York were brought crashing down, and things could never be
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the same again. The definitive "end of irony"8 was proclaimed in the US and elsewhere
immediately after the terrorist attack.
What is post-irony?
The German edition of Wikipedia characterises the term as a "different position to that of
irony. Similar to the deconstruction of the "grand narratives" [...] of Modernists in the course
of post-modern discourse, [...] the device of post-irony is a critique of the implications of a
relativised concept of truth". Post-irony should not be misconstrued as a call for pre-ironic
simplicity, or as strict anti-irony: instead, it should be understood as a meaningful
recommendation. It is "a responsible attitude that takes irony seriously and promises to make
it productive again under present-day conditions".9 In his essay "Postironie als Entfaltung"
(Unfolding Post-irony), Sebastian Plnges proposes a similar reading that neither treats the
post-ironic individual with irony, nor feels it has to reanimate the grand narratives of reason,
truth, history, progress or art: "The problem, to which post-irony could be an answer, ceases
to be a problem as soon as one learns to deal productively with paradoxes". The ability to
endure contingencies is the strength of the post-ironist, "who thus offers a free and productive
option for the evolution of the irony paradox. The post-ironist puts all his eggs in one basket
(without denying having had a choice); he marks his preference value and none of this is an
embarrassment to him: he arrives at a decision and assumes responsibility for it".10 Post-irony,
then, is an attitude, a statement, a position.
Post-irony in art
The Swiss artist duo Com&Com introduced the term post-irony into the contemporary art
discourse at the end of 2008. With their first post-ironic manifesto11, Com&Com promoted
post-irony as implying new imaginative and creative freedom, and used rainbow colours to
call for the rediscovery of beauty, a revival of the authentic and a celebration of creativity and
uniqueness.
In 2010 under the title Neues Rheinland. Die postironische Generation12 (New Rhineland.
The post-ironic generation), the Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen held a group exhibition
featuring post-ironic tendencies in German contemporary art. It brought together some 30
positions of young artists displaying post-ironic attitudes and developing a "new transition to
seriousness, engagement and humour".13 The exhibition's co-curator, Stefanie Kreuzer, sees
post-ironic art, with its artistic devices and methods such as parody, quotation, sampling,
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fiction and, yes, irony, as a renunciation of the artistic concept of the 1980s. "If irony had, in
the modern era, and even more strongly in post-modernism, shifted the problem from the
world toward discourse, the realm of signs, the perspective is now turned around".14 Here, the
central element of the contemporary art scene is the orientation towards the individual. Other
topical themes included physicality, handcrafting and interior construction. Art historian
Noemi Smolik supports these observations: "Kneading and shaping, drawing and painting,
cutting, gluing, and tying are practices that appear more and more. Many artists suddenly
discovered ceramics for themselves".15 Curator Markus Heinzelmann writes in the catalogue's
foreword: "(...) it takes courage to take the material seriously again, to give seemingly oldfashioned techniques such as ceramics another try, to create silhouettes, to dig up pigments
for your own paints and mix them with your own hands, to incorporate a song by Udo Jrgens
into a film and be not ironic about it".16
Art critic Jrg Heiser places the concept of post-irony in a historical context and sees early
precursors in the American Camp movement ("Camp is post-irony avant la lettre"). Postirony for Heiser is no longer something bizarre that circles around a serious core, but "but
instead something profoundly serious that permits overtones suggesting that it might be
intended to be funny". Post-irony is about the social acceptance of a "dialectical conception of
what "real" and what "artificial" mean in today's multi-layered structure of media realities".17
Yet so long as the "post" continues to precede the "irony" and is not replaced by a new artistic
concept, for instance, a distinction must go beyond the aforementioned dialectic: post-irony is
an attitude that no longer needs to work at the difference between 'genuine' and 'artificial',
whether serious or ironic.
The Post-Ironic Manifesto
Since its founding 17 years ago in 1997, Com&Com has reinvented itself and its artistic
concept a number of times. Following complex communication and strategic projects in its
early years which, alongside techniques such as sampling, fakes and provocation, relied on
the all-embracing lubrication of irony (C-Files: Tell Saga [2000],18 Mocmoc [20032008],19
Gugusdada [20042011]20), a comprehensive reorientation began in 2006 that culminated at
the end of 2008 with the proclamation of its Post-Ironic Manifesto21:

1. We are living in a post-ironic age. Ironic doubt is just dissatisfaction elevated into a
lifestyle.
2. We have begun to have doubts about the process of doubting.
3. Truth is no longer unconditional, but rather changes to fit the demands of the moment.
4. The world is more than what it is.
5. Everyday life provides a proving ground for the human spirit.
6. Everything is filled with magic and beauty.
7. Beauty can inspire us to become better people.
8. Beauty can grow into love.
9. Out of love, truth can emerge.
10. We are standing at the verge of something wondrous: the rebirth of our self-creation.
Post-irony means total imaginative and creative freedom.
Bearing in mind Com&Com's early oeuvre, which had consisted mainly of satirical and ironic
videos, installations and actions, the art world's initial scepticism is perfectly understandable.
The manifesto was viewed in some quarters as a "rhetorical manoeuvre and ironic response to
the de facto institutional victory of post-irony"22, the reason being that once the irony genie is
out of the bottle, it is very hard to put it back in again. However, the Swiss duo's artistic
output over the past six years and the accompanying mediation and teaching projects at
universities and colleges of art have shown just how serious they were with their
proclamation.23 Following years spent ensconced behind their works and their largely
industrial or digital output, the artists again took up pencil, brush and knife and began
appearing in public. This occurred in combination with new work cycles centred on nature
(see Baum24), folk culture and traditions (see Bloch25). Post-irony as understood by
Com&Com is "the admission of emotions and the courage to summon up pathos and great
emotions" and "a marvelling contemplation of the real, the simple and the magic of the
everyday".26
'Post-ironic Turn' and Post-Art
Post-irony is not just about the change in perception of a single artistic position. Similar
thought processes and practices can be observed in current art after 9/11 and since the
financial crisis. The related disciplines of music, film and literature also feature signs of postirony.27 Sometimes there is even talk of a paradigm shift and a "post-ironic turn".
Post-irony is a hope of change and a better world free from sarcasm and cynicism. Combined
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with this is an invitation to rediscover the richness, beauty and truths inherent in life through a
sense of inquisitiveness, closeness with others and collective seeking of creative solutions.
Post-irony is the attitude of confronting issues and problems head-on, assuming responsibility
and having the courage to conceive of utopia and beautiful ideas while not being afraid of
failing, of embarrassment or of great emotions.
It may well be that post-irony will appear under a different name at some point. What it is
does not matter, provided that the art that emerges has an impact.
In the course of her dOCUMENTA13 (2012), curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev even went
as far as to doubt whether the category of art can be regarded as a given: "Nothing can be
assumed".28 She characterised the notion of art, which explores colour through the medium of
colour, form through form, history through history and space through space, as a "bourgeois,
Eurocentric idea" and questioned whether the field of art as related to the grand Western
narrative will survive the 21st century. Moreover, she no longer speaks of artists, only
participants: "We need only a bunch of participants doing what they want, and this variety
produces culture".
In his Documenta critique in the New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz has already given this art
variety a name: "Post Art things that aren't artworks so much as they are about the drive to
make things that, like art, embed imagination in material and grasp that creativity is a cosmic
force".29
Making things happen
Whether or not art, or beyond it cultural production will continue to thrive, art is becoming
more easily accessible and more tangible; places and genres are becoming more permeable,
and authorship more multiple and participative. Current artistic production is increasingly
focused on production processes involving the artists and their recipients, and less on the
objects themselves. The path leads from the object to the subject, away from the artefact
toward the referential, the research, the process and interaction, the action and the situation.
Art historian Nicolas Bourriaud defines art that emerges as a result of relationships between
individuals and groups, between artists and the world and between observers and the world as
"Relational Art".30 Of the creative practices that work with the "material" of human
interaction and social context, he says: "This chance can be summed up in just a few words:
learning to inhabit the world in a better way".
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Joseph Beuys had already incorporated human action into his theory of Social Sculpture
in a bid to shape society.31 Today Social Art still sees social practice as the place and the
medium for realising art.32 Related concepts include Participatory Art33, Community Art
and Socially Engaged Art34.

A description by British artist Jeremy Deller of his personal situation is indicative of what
contemporary art as a counter-trend to the humming art market with its steadily rising "wall
shares" (German: Wandaktien35) is thirsting for: "I went from being an artist that makes
things to being an artist that makes things happen".36

This text has appeared in earlier publications in: Johannes M. Hedinger/Torsten Meyer:
"What's next? Kunst nach der Krise", Kadmos Verlag Berlin, 2013, pp. 239242, and in:
Kunstforum International Bd. 213: "Ironie", Ruppichteroth, 2012, pp. 112125.
Translation: Will Mowat

Brief biography
Johannes M. Hedinger (*1971), artist, art theorist, curator, film-maker and author (Zurich,
New York); studies in Fine Arts (ZHdK Zurich, UCLA Los Angeles), Art History, Film
Studies, Cultural Studies (University of Zurich, Humboldt University of Berlin) and Strategic
Marketing (UdK Berlin). Lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK and University
of Cologne. Founded artist duo Com&Com with Marcus Gossolt in 1997. Websites:
www.johanneshedinger.com, www.com-com.ch

David Forster Wallace, "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction", in: The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 13,
Champaign 1993, p. 151.
2
Jedediah Purdy, Das Elend der Ironie, Hamburg 2002.
3
Ibid., p. 83.
4
Alex Shakar, Der letzte Schrei, Hamburg 2002.
5
Alex Shakar, The Savage Girl, New York 2001, p. 40.

Ibid., p. 124.
www.themillions.com/2011/07/the-year-of-wonders.html (downloaded on 30.7.2011).
8
See e.g. Roger Rosenblatt, "The Age of Irony Comes To An End", in: Time Magazine, 16.9.2001.
9
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postironie (downloaded on 30.7.2011).
10
Sebastian Plnges, "Postironie als Entfaltung", in: Torsten Meyer, Wey-Han Tan, Christina Schwalbe, Ralf Appelt (eds.),
Medien und Bildung. Institutionelle Kontexte und kultureller Wandel, Wiesbaden 2011, p. 438446.
11
www.postirony.com
12
See Markus Heinzelmann, Stefanie Kreuzer (eds.), Neues Rheinland. Die postironische Generation, exhibition catalogue,
Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Berlin, 2010.
13
Press release at: www.museum-morsbroich.de/ (downloaded: 30.7.2011).
14
Stefanie Kreuzer, "Gegenrede Ironie", in: Heinzelmann/Kreuzer, p. 43 ff.
15
Noemi Smolik, "Ein Manifest fr politisch wirksame Kunst", in: Heinzelmann/Kreuzer, (eds.), p. 35 ff.
16
Markus Heinzelmann, "Vorwort", in: Heinzelmann/Kreuzer, p. 7.
17
Jrg Heiser, "Im Ernst von polemischer Ironie zur postironischen Vernetzung in der Kunst des Rheinlands und
berhaupt", in: Heinzelmann/Kreuzer, p. 19.
18
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdjRZlxGpE.
19
www.mocmoc.ch; www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3_SNlWx-NA.
20
www.gugusdada.net; www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlxCBenCDns.
21
Visit www.postirony.com for original version in English.
22
Jrg Heiser, in: Heinzelmann/Kreuzer, p. 19.
23
The blog at www.postirony.com has existed since 2009 and contains an extensive collection of material on post-ironic
tendencies in the arts, as well as other attempts at definitions.
24
www.com-com.ch/de/archive/detail/10
25
www.bloch23781.com
26
www.com-com.ch
27
See the extensive archive at www.postirony.com
28
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Brief an einen Freund, dOCUMENTA (13) series: 100 Notes 100 Thoughts/100 Notizen
100 Gedanken, #003,Ostfildern 2011.
29
Jerry Saltz, " A Glimpse of Art's Future at Documenta", in: New York Magazine / vulture.com, 16.6.2012.
30
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Paris 1998.
31
Joseph Beuys, Jeder Mensch ist ein Knstler, Berlin 1988.
32
See Shannon Jackson, Social Works, London 2011.
33
Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London 2012.
34
See Nato Thompson, Living as Form, Socially Engaged Art from 19912011, New York 2012.
35
Wandaktie (German): art bought primarily for its investment potential, which can optionally be hung on the wall.
36
Jeremy Deller, in: Johannes M. Hedinger, Torsten Meyer (eds.), What's next? Kunst nach der Krise, Berlin 2013, p. 201.
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