This is Not New

Art, Culture, and the Promise of Change

By: David Balzer

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eBook | 20 May 2025

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Praise for Curationism: "Balzer writes with zest, scepticism and sly humour" Sheila Heti, author of Pure Colour

What does it mean to call something "new"? Why is Western art and culture, even after postmodernism, still so obsessed with the concept? What are the consequences of relying on culture to bring about social change?

In this provocative book, David Balzer argues that Western culture was never designed to produce truly new or original artefacts. Rather, we move from fixation to fixation, trend to trend—a cycle of creation and destruction with deep origins in Judeo-Christianity and the paganism that preceded it. The culture industry promises its own form of change while preserving existing systems of power exactly as they are.

From the New Jerusalem to the New Left, from Vannevar Bush to Kate Bush, This is Not New asks difficult questions about the role of culture not in making change, but in delaying—even preventing—it.

David Balzer is a writer, lawyer, editor, and educator. He is the author of Contrivances and Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else. His critical writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Guardian, Artforum, and Frieze. He lives in Canada.