*Originally published in Avant-Post, ed. Louis Armand (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia Books, 2006) 85-113. It is a critical commonplace to observe that, following the procession of one ascendant modernist art movement after another, today the cluttered multiplicity of artistic production institutes no single prevailing orientation. Incorporating bio-tech experiments in genetic manipulation (Critical Art Ensemble) as readily as ancient Chinese traditions of fire-work display (Cai Guo-Qiang), the contemporary art environment assimilates figurative and abstract painting right along with computer programming, encompasses daguerreotypy as much as mobilography (cell phone photography). What’s identified then as the formal and conceptual repertoire of postmodern art is more truly a restive aggregation, ramified with contending styles, techniques, devices. What’s more, at no point in history have so