The Turns of the Global

When we talk about the geographical, ecological, ethnographic, historical, documentary, and cosmopolitan &turns& in relation to the work of practitioners of contempory art, what exactly do we mean? Are we talking about a &reading strategy&? About an interpretive model, as would be derived from the linguistic turn of the 1970s, or rather about a stratigraphic structure that could be read across multiple cultural practices? Do we wish to read one system by means of another system, in a way that one nurtures the other so that it can open us up to other forms of being? Or is it rather about a generative movement in which a new horizon emerges in the process, leaving behind the practice that was its point of departure? The recurrence of &turn& in place of &style&, &-ism&, or &tendency& would ultimately respond to a clear urgency of the contemporary global world: a movement characterised by aesthetic pluralism, by the simultaneousness of various modi operandi, and by a great multiplicity of languages that constantly change their state while having many features in common. And &turn& would also allow within the space of the contemporary & of here and now &, a great diversity of stories from all around the world that should be confronted simultaneously in an intellectual outlook that is continuous and disjunctive, essential to understanding the present as a whole.