The quarter of an hour of Glory increases to sixteen minutes
Arsen ECA
Andy Warhol and the fifteen minutes of fame
Well before the advent of social networks, Andy Warhol, with almost prophetic foresight, declared: “In the future, everyone will be entitled to 15 minutes of fame”, thus launching a scathing criticism of the consumer society. At that time, our appetite for consumption had not yet reached the dizzying heights of today. Everything intensifies over time, including time itself.
If everything increases over time, it seemed essential to extend this famous quarter of an hour of glory, bringing it to sixteen minutes. This symbolic increase is not trivial; it reflects our growing propensity to stretch, to amplify each fragment of our existence, in an incessant quest for recognition and visibility.
The quarter of an hour of fame plus one minute
The paradox inherent in a large part of the contemporary artistic world is manifested in their propensity to make propositions or establish diagnoses which are, in truth, only the reflection of an excessively predictable and one-dimensional society.
It is terrifying to note that artists are often seen as the antennas of society, capturing, interpreting and transcribing what they perceive, when they should, imperatively, offer alternative visions to the existing world and provide the means to realize these visions. To simply paint the present is to already belong to the past.
We are in search of perpetual deviance, a phenomenon that some philosophers call “clinamen”. Far from being a simple anomaly, this deviance embodies the only path to humanity’s progress, the cornerstone of evolution. In the current context, this clinamen is stifled, crushed under the yoke of algorithms and artists who, often unconsciously, amplify a stifling normality. It is not enough to proclaim ideas; the real challenge lies in the ability to materialize them, to translate them into acts and works that transgress the banal.
In a lucid analysis of our time, if we were to reevaluate Warhol’s famous “quarter hour of glory” in the light of our current society, marked by extreme acceleration and volatility, we could move forward that this time of glory is now reduced by half. Indeed, it would seem more accurate to say that everyone is entitled to 7.5 minutes of fame, a figure that reflects the lightning speed with which stars rise and fall in our cultural firmament.
However, in the spirit of the clinamen, this tendency towards reduction should not be passively accepted. On the contrary, the alternative, creative deviance, would consist of going against the flow of this dynamic. It would be a question of extending this quarter of an hour of glory, of bringing it to sixteen minutes. This expansion is not a simple rebellion against the norm; it represents a concrete alternative, a refusal to conform to the distorting mirror of society. By symbolically increasing this duration, we affirm the possibility of resistance, of a reappropriation of time and the value that we give to fame and recognition.
Poetic implementation
It clearly appears that in the world of the arts, the ease of access to fame, ardently sought by many artists, is often to the detriment of the very essence of their work and the poetry that should animate. This quest for visibility, criticized in the philosophy of Andy Warhol, can be summed up in a simple formula: be seen to exist, be seen to convince, be seen to sell. This is a demand that we find among street artists, who leave their marks in various forms. I myself participated in this process by writing “Look at the sky”, a Rimbaldian echo of his “So look at the sky”, where quantity and visibility take precedence over everything. Being seen, that’s the credo.
Thus, by adopting an approach inspired by Street Art, I could extend this famous quarter of an hour of glory to sixteen minutes. This extension would materialize by the act of sticking stickers on city walls, for sixteen precious minutes, in the name of anyone who wishes to claim this action with the aim of granting themselves ephemeral celebrity, by affixing their signature. It is an approach which, while being part of the tradition of Street Art, offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the quest for recognition, playing with time and identity.
The reward
So how do you achieve fame? With a simple click, one might think. But the reality is more nuanced, because only those who have the perseverance to read this text to the end will discover the link to this famous click. It is at this precise moment that the extent of the current disaster is revealed: this ambient laziness, this society of Insignificance, of Nothing. Today, I am aware that this text, lacking any apparent interest, will remain largely ignored. On the one hand, it arouses no one’s interest, poetry having deserted our hearts, and on the other hand, we have lost the habit of reading, preferring to turn to videos and easy clicks. So click and look at the sky.
