The children of Larry Clark and Jeroen Boschma: a particular encounter with the millennials

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You are mistaken if you try to pretend that I do it to generate controversy. I'm just trying to be honest and explain the truth about life." These are words by Larry Clark taken from his website. Clark is a photographer and filmmaker born in Oklahoma, one of those states where Donald Trump left Hillary Clinton's Democrats at zero. His work is a portrait of teenagers born between the eighties and the beginning of the 21st century. Larry Clark is largely known for the stir caused by his first film, Kids (1995). Since then, he has made seven more, of which I like to highlight Ken Park (2002) because I saw it in a small cinema in Helsinki, where I lived for a few months away from home and the anchors of good behavior. Now that the American artist has turned 75 and life must invite him to sweeten the bitter fantasies that, like bouquets of dead flowers, he has been delivering to us throughout a long career, perhaps he feels like having an infusion from time to time.

Experts do not agree on how to calendar the central generation of Larry Clark's work, the one after the firstborn of the post-World War baby boomers. To refer to it, some speak of generation "Y" and the most current call its members millennials.

There is a brand of infusions that differentiates itself from the competition because it sends optimistic messages through the label that hangs from the end of the string. One of my favorites says something like: "There has been no one like you, there is no one like you, and there will be no one like you". Zen philosophy promotes this way of presenting the individual in the global context, and I find it accurate. However, reality tells us that, saving some singularities, the objectives of economic markets determine the outcome of those of us who belong to a specific period of time, although sometimes it is the result of failed experiments. That is why we speak of generations, sets and subsets of identities that have been forged and that respond by providing their own voice in art, thought, the relationship with the environment, interpersonal relationships, etc.

Experts do not agree on how to calendar the central generation of Larry Clark's work, the one after the firstborn of the post-World War baby boomers. To refer to it, some speak of generation "Y" and the most current call its members millennials. Be that as it may, in 2008, when neither the "Y" concept nor much less the millennial concept had spread, a book by Jeroen Boschma, a Dutch consultant trained in art, fell into my hands, in which young people who today are at most thirty years old were the object of analysis: Generation Einstein: smart, social and superfast. Communicating with Young People in the 21st Century (Pearson, 2006). These were the conclusions of ten years of study and conversations that the communication agency Keesie, of which Boschma is co-founder, held with young people born after 1988. Everything indicated that a change in behavior was consolidating with respect to the preceding generation, distinguished by emotional ups and downs and pessimism, ideological emptiness, traditional values, and the dichotomy between feeling like heirs of a family and the fierce desire to apostatize from it.

Everything indicated that a change in behavior was consolidating with respect to the preceding generation, distinguished by emotional ups and downs and pessimism, ideological emptiness, traditional values, and the dichotomy between feeling like heirs of a family and the fierce desire to apostatize from it

Eight months ago I decided to leave everything in Barcelona and travel. That has allowed me to come into contact with the men and women who were the object of Boschma's theoretical study and Clark's emotional interpretation. We have coincided practicing yoga in a ashramfrom Rishikesh, I have seen them determined to do the Annapurna with a creature on their back and we have contemplated together the wonders of Milford Sound inside a dilapidated van. I have compared myself to them and felt like a victim and insignificant. I have experienced, and even recorded, a desire to move away from learned clichés as models of success to follow.

In Catalonia, the men and women of Clark and Boschma are a rarity. This is a consequence of a secular delay in cultural evolution compared to young people from central and northern Europe, Canadians, Americans, and some Asians.

Boschma's results in 2006 already indicated that the life model of these young people focused on the present and that's it. I have been able to confirm that this is so and that they have turned it into a virtue: they shy away from expectations. I have also perceived sequels of Larry Clark's macabre portrait: those who are 18 and 30 years old today do not share our structured and discipline-bound system at all. The result of their actions is not the result of effort, but of their own existence. They are self-taught by conviction, they reject models that don't suit them and they succeed (oh, paradox) because they don't seek it. These men and women point towards a new cognitive revolution. They are prepared to accelerate a global trend change that would completely renew Western life patterns. Faced with this scenario, I can only feel hopeful.

However, I regret having to point out two things. The first is that in Catalonia, the men and women of Clark and Boschma are a rarity. This is a consequence of a secular delay in cultural evolution compared to young people from central and northern Europe, Canadians, Americans, and some Asians. It is not a light comment, it is the reflection of a recklessness that has its origin in the living root of Francoism. The second is that this generation has learned to live and, for now (at least among Europeans), I have not seen any desire to address politics. They understand it, but they consider it boring, insignificant, and useless. For them, it would be like ceasing to live, and rightly so.