Notes on metamodernism was conceived, from the outset, as the digital companion to a scholarly research programme. Indeed, much of the editorial board came together organically during conferences and symposia, and the webzine’s first few iterations coincided with the publication of a first academic article, unoriginally also titled Notes on Metamodernism.
In the subsequent years, as the webzine grew in contributors and readers, numerous other academic texts were published, in multiple fora and various languages. These texts considered topics as diverse as fashion and philosophy, psychoanalysis and film, marketing and literature, music, interior design, religion, television, law, political theory, and so much else. Throughout Notes on Metamodernism’s seven year run, there were a number of academic conferences organised around the topic, as well as, excitingly, critical exchanges on cultural and political platforms, exhibitions on fairs, in musea and in galleries, and plays in theatres.
To name but one example we were ourselves intricately involved in and of which we remain today particularly proud: Metamodernism: The return of History, an international symposium at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2014, which brought together thinkers, artists and writers from across the political spectrum, such as Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Francis Fukuyama, Jorg Heiser, Hassnae Bouazza, Camille de Toledo, Jonas Staal, Nina Power, Cally Spooner, Ewald Engelen, Zihni Ozdil, Adam Thirlwell, Sarah Rifky, and Michel Bauwens. If much of this webzine was concerned with mapping out the various forms and configurations metamodernism might take in the present, the symposium set out to begin charting the sensibility’s historical development, considering the lasting cultural impact of events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the financial crisis, and the creation of Web 2.0.
From left to right: the 2017 collection Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth after Postmodernism, edited by Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons and Timotheus Vermeulen for Rowman and Littlefield Int.; a postcard from the 2014 symposium Metamodernism, at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; a special issue of the 2013 American Book Review; a flyer for the 2012 exhibit Discussing Metamodernism at Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; a page from Adbusters’ 2015 focus on metamodernism; and an online ad for the 2011 programme No More Modern: Notes on Metamodernism at the Museum of Art and Design, New York.
In the years since Notes on Metamodernism published its last article to date – Nadine Fessler’s excellent reading of Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World – the number of publications and conferences has only grown. If we are to believe google scholar, at the time of writing there are well over fifteen hundred scholarly engagements with metamodernism. Rutgers University librarian Katie Elson Anderson has put together a select bibliography of those texts that address metamodernism exclusively, which can be found here. Three of the webzine’s editors have further edited a collection of essays and are currently working, individually and together, towards a number of monographs. Esteemed colleagues in Britain and the Netherlands put together an AHRC funded network and published a special issue, whilst over in the USA the American Book Review devoted a number to metamodernism.
We are beyond excited to see that the online discussion of metamodernism has not gone silent either. On the contrary, there appear to be debates everywhere, though inevitably some more nuanced and considered than others (there certainly is some derivative and opportunistic stuff out there…). We particularly want to recommend the research our American colleagues Linda Ceriello and Greg Dember are doing over at What is Metamodern?