WHAT IS POP? Pop is a phenomenon, a culture, a mode of thought and an industry, according to the writer Hanif Kureshi and the pop critic Jon Savage in their weighty Pop Reader (London, 1995). But the origins of pop are not easy to trace. Perhaps pop itself should be seen as the origin which it no longer has.

Something is bursting

Pop can be seen as an idea, an energy, a poetry. Even if it is not a religion, it is more than mere aesthetics: it is a way of thinking, feeling, loving, fighting, travelling, in short, a way of living and dying. Pop: "Is it real?" Pop is the central pivot of an alternative life and a personal view of the world - but not a permanent one. Pop is not an ideology, for how many people listened to pop music when they were younger and still grew up to become bank directors and civil servants.

The comeback of pop and popular culture is creeping into the art world. Common places for pop are being rediscovered. Enthusiastic galleries are affiliating themselves more closely with subcultures and alternative cultures and are offering themselves as forums for up-to-the-minute social debate. In general it is true to say that the art of the nineties has tried to break out of the confines of self-reference to intervene in other systems. Art and pop music - many artists today are interested in making this web of artistic forces interact.

Either more work is being done with other colleagues from various spheres of art or, antithetically and more simply, artists are exploring their own multiple talents. Some writing, some painting, some filming, some photography, some installation, some performance, some music, some dance. This crossover of the arts is being prompted by curators, producers and club owners so that it is entirely possible that a new avant-garde can come 'from outside' too. A crossover of styles, spheres and genres is called for. A crossover of method, philosophy and work principle is called for. There is talk of a permanent art zapping to counter the shallow cliquishness or compartmentalisation which goes on.

Books and discussions on art and pop (and maybe exhibitions in the near future) are shooting up all around. Does the current artistic interest in pop dovetail with a hostility towards theory, lack of political consciousness and affirmative cheerfulness? Or is the emphasis on fun an ironic and seductive means of dissident subversion? The fact that there is a hot - or rather cool - debate on the pop phenomenon, just as there is on pop as an aesthetic practice and strategy, is a welcome occurrence; art is popping again. The literal meaning of the word says it all: Pop = something is bursting.

Sampled archives

Artists today view history as an infinite, indeed Babylonian, archive of images, media, sounds and symbols in order to explore the open spaces of the future. They are living a nomadic existence, playing their lives as if in a Walkman: using its features to travel the world (record) and talk it (play), while casting a backwards glance (rewind/review) at a visionary future (fast forward). The semi-conscious experience of music through headphones conveys a stereo panorama of the world. "My headphones" sings Björk, "they saved my life/ your tape/ it lulled me to sleep/ nothing will be the same."

This conjures up memories of the American rock band Sonic Youth who, years ago, sang about Daydream Nation. The German painter Gerhard Richter provided a suitable image for the cover with the simple title Candle. Daydreamers often keep to themselves and their thoughts are often elsewhere, although not completely gone, but right up against the edge of reality.

Sampling, mix and remix: these are the maxims of learning about history. This seizing of the world which technology has enabled also reflects one's own understanding of one's existence. This sampled world view does not bring things into harmony, but neither does it mix things together. What it does is to place things alongside one another in a subversive way as if just temporarily and incompletely laid out. Things drift apart if they belong apart. And this is what causes the tension. For if things are cut and pasted together indiscriminately, then there is the danger of uniformity. There are no consequences to using sampling as a sugary fitness programme when confronting the world. To be avant-garde here means getting involved in history and mixing up a gigantic puzzle - with one Kafkaesque twist: the puzzle may not even fit together.

Paolo Bianchi [bianchi.art@pop.agri.ch]