Art Theory and Politics

Edited by Rimgaila Salys

The early years of the twenty-first century have been an exciting transitional period in Russian cinema, as the industry recovered from the crises of the late 1990s and again stepped onto the global stage. During these years four generations, from the late Soviet directors through post-Soviet and New Russian filmmakers to the Russian millennials, have worked in varying visual styles and with diverse narrative strategies, while searching for a new cinematic language. Financing and distribution models have evolved, along with conservative politics driving Ministry of Culture regulation. This reader is intended both for contemporary Russian cinema courses and for modern Russian culture courses that emphasize film. It does not attempt to establish a canon for the period but seeks to provide undergraduate students with an introduction to significant Russian films released between 2005 and 2016 that are also available with English subtitles. The twenty-one essays on individual films provide background information on directors’ careers, detailed analyses of selected films, along with suggested further readings both in English and Russian.

Learn more & purchase: https://www.academicstudiespress.com/filmandmediastudies/the-contemporary-russian-cinema-reader

This document critically reviews the theories of the avant-garde of both the Left and the Right put forward between the 1920s – the time of the vigorous assertion of the avant-garde – and the late 1970s – the beginning of the conservative turn led by Regan and Thatcher and reflected in cultural, change. The focus is on modern autonomous art and the historical avant-garde art movements. Art is first of all put in its place by locating it in the context of the institutional framework of modern society. This includes historical references to the emergence of the modern concept of art and of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics. The review of the theories opens with analyses of Ortega y Gassett and Poggioli’s proposals dating from 1925 and 1968 respectively. Important among the theories of the Left are those of the representatives of Critical Theory such as Lukács, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse and Bürger. Among the Right, both the German and American Neo-conservatives are considered, Gehlen, Ritter and Marquard representing the former and Bell that latter. The analysis closes with final reflections on the concepts of the autonomy of art and of the avant-garde which become comprehensible only within the context of rationalised and disenchanted (i.e. disillusioned and enlightened) modern society.

The research undertaken in the following paper bases its analysis on the model of the decentralized governance, offered in the case of blockchain technologies. The focus will be centered on some social elements of innovation introduced by the blockchain system, such as the Non-fungible tokens (NFT) and on the argument of their undeniable influence on a social, political and cultural levelinto forming a new model of governance. More specifically, it will be given an insight on the modes in which the compliance to the blockchain and NFT model, gives rise to new levels of relations between people, influencing their ways of living and socializing. Thus, NFTs are putting forward some novel aesthetics of interaction-exemplified by the case of a new perspective on art, and enhancing individual will and autonomy, through the circulation of cryptographic tokens within the digital space.

Studia o niepełnosprawności odróżniają „uszkodzenie” (impairment) od „niepełnosprawność” (disability). Uszkodzenie lub uszczerbek dotyczą fizyczności, (nie)możliwości, jakie daje nam ciało, które zamieszkujemy, natomiast niepełnosprawność jest warunkiem społecznym związanym z kulturowym postrzeganiem osób z niepełnosprawnościami oraz ze stopniem dostępności miejsc wspólnych. Pierwsze to kategoria medyczna, drugie – polityczna. To o społeczeństwo, które uniepełnosprawnia, toczą się gorące debaty i aktywistyczne walki. W Polsce najbardziej znamiennym wydarzeniem w historii działań na rzecz godnego życia osób z niepełnosprawnościami pozostaje trwająca 40 dni okupacja budynku Sejmu w 2017 r. Na jej podstawie powstał spektakl Rewolucja, której nie było w wykonaniu aktorów(-ek) Teatru 21.

The Generative Code If we consider our viewpoints , perceptions, and conceptions the results of political, economical, or cultural exposures which are themselves the results of hugely disparate human and non-human constructs; and if we consider these as being magnified by advances in communications and technologies over the last century; if we understand that this has led to an altered perception of the production of knowledge which foregrounds its fragile and temporal nature, then we can establish that knowledge production has changed from being dependent on identity and definition, to one that produces movement and possibility. Modes of being/doing have been transformed by advances in science and technology. In addition to this, our understanding of being and doing has been transformed by discoveries at the heart of science and the nature of genesis. The new ideas and concepts that proliferate as a result of technological invention has revolutionised our relationship with the world in terms of thinking and perceiving. These altered relationships regarding our integration into the world provide an altered understanding of form as being /doing. This relationship has always been explored through the experimental art practice, never more than now has this relationship carried so much in terms of an understanding of our position as percievers and concievers in rapidly moving cultural predicaments. This is because the experimental practice redraws our relationship with knowledge production as socio-cultural and politico-economic processes instigated from collective purpose/content trajectories at the same time incorporating disseminated dialogues of intervention and chance. It provides a model or a blue print for how invention-the genesis of ideas, values and things-is created, established and utilised which can aid creative intervention across disciplines and borders.

This paper shows how contemporary art can be political in its purpose using the example of the works of Joseph Beuys, Patricia Piccinini, Genesis P-Orridge and Armand Fernandez. The impact of late capitalism on art production is also discussed.

Universalism today is not just an ethical aspiration. Nor is it simply a religious conviction or an epistemological principle; it is, rather, the dominant ideology of our time. It has become an explicit political aim, implemented now by voting booths, now by trading agreements, in international courts of justice or so-called humanitarian interventions, or through the distribu- tion of laptop computers to African schools. Why is this idea now of such paramount importance? Whence the urgency to affirm or deny, to support or question, the existence of universal truths, values or rights? The idea of universalism has become an apparently self-evident signifier, yet, as we shall see, there is another notion of universality that works against this ideology.

En este artículo analizaremos la aeropostalidad de Dittborn como una corporalidad en la que escritura, pintura, gráfica y fotografía se interpelan. Plantearemos el problema de las manchas, las huellas y las borraduras en tanto que indicios distópicos de cuerpos ausentes. Más en concreto, hablaremos de la aeropostalidad de Dittborn como una estrategia para 'hacer aparecer' el cuerpo de los desaparecidos, esto es, hablaremos de la pintura como confesión de lo que está ausente. Palavras-chave Pinturas aeropostales. Borradura. Arte chileno. Dictadura. Cuerpo-escritura. Abstract The article addresses the work of Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn as an embodied territory in which painting, writing, graphics and photography converge. The article characterizes his use of erasures, marks, and traces as a dystopian indication of absent bodies. More to the point, the article offers a commentary on the pictorial appearance of the disappeared body; that is, elaborates on painting as a confession of what remains absent.

In 2017, for the first time in the history of documenta, curator Adam Szymczyk made the decision to site the quinquennial in two locations: Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece. Szymczyk's intention was to "decentralize" documenta's Western European gaze, turning the exhibition into an opportunity to foreground Greco-German relations in the wake of Greece's debt crisis. This essay examines documenta 14 through the overlapping frames of education, ethno-nationalism, and wealth—three real-world currents made visible by not only the works of art chosen, but in the protracted controversy over the exhibition's budget shortfall, which reinscribed some of the very dynamics Szymczyk set out to critique with his curatorial decision to site half of documenta in Athens.

This paper / article presents a brief discussion on contemporary ‘artists citizens’. It will examine the public life, and the political activity in particular (vita activa), of the critical cultural worker in neoliberal capitalist society. Here, a critical cultural worker – theoretician, artist, curator, journal editor, cultural producer, etc. –means the one who wants and tries to be political. Through discussing her dubious politicality, I aim here to unpack a tension between the work and the politics in today’s society. In addition, assuming that most citizens today are workers themselves I would propose a few thoughts on what the politics today could be and how it could look like once we recognize its classical definition as socially and historically inadequate.

Keywords: cultural worker, labor, politics, politicality, vita activa, precarization, Post-Fordism, knowledge production, complicity, community

American and Polish artists were major players in the development of a modern international fiber art movement. The sweeping differences between the two cultural contexts enhanced the vitality and diversity of an international movement that existed for a brief moment in time within zones circumscribed by gender and geography while being informed by and engaged with larger complex artistic and cultural systems. The fiber art movement released, reorganized, exploited and conserved artistic traditions, materials, methods and artists ultimately sustained by networks and institutions in America, Poland and beyond. Examining the emergence

If you, like many, are perplexed by the art world’s insatiable preoccupation with the pressing issues of our times, and by the images of red-carpeted red-soled high-heeled art parties celebrating the artwork that addresses global unrest, poverty and conflict (fresh out of the reasonable comfort of London and New York studios), then Anthony Downey’s ‘Art and Politics Now’ will entertain your brain in a pleasantly refreshing manner. Though not directly addressing the issue of the meaningful vs. delusional, the book provides a brilliant and extremely helpful account of art from across the globe that engages with and addresses the political.

Precies twee jaar na de mislukte coup tegen Erdoğan vaardigde het Turkse regime op 15 juli 2018 een decreet uit dat de autonomie van alle kunstenaars aan staatsinstellingen aan banden legt. Het is een zoveelste aanval tegen de vrije kunsten in Turkije, terwijl de politieke ruimte intussen één groot theater lijkt te worden. Wat staat er tussen de macht en het verzet op het spel?

L’articolo intende affrontare il fenomeno della globalizzazione culturale, nel settore specifico dell’arte contemporanea, rilevando alcuni tra i suoi lati più significativi e i suoi limiti, evidenziando soprattutto il sostanziale rischio dell’appiattimento delle diversità e delle identità. Considerando come un incipit la mostra Magiciens de la terre, curata da Jean-Hubert Martin nel 1989, se ne ricostruisce e ripercorre in parte il dibattito critico, quindi vengono tratteggiati alcuni degli aspetti caratterizzanti l’allargamento dello scenario artistico attuale. Viene, infine, ipotizzata l’altra strada della globalizzazione: una negoziazione tra ciò che è locale e ciò che è globale, un immaginario ibrido composto da un vocabolario che rende ovunque riconoscibili i contorni e gli elementi chiave di esperienze comuni.

En concordancia con Foucault y Negri y Guattari, exponemos las capacidades de los sujetos marginales y pertenecientes a grupos subalternos para desafiar el orden dominante y el discurso hegemónico. Su discurso debería ser escuchado en público ya que han tenido una experiencia directa con los fallos e indiferencia del sistema. Debido a esto, sus conocimientos siempre son corporalizados, de la experiencia o vivencia misma y menos del fruto de un aprendizaje formal y textual. Algunos artistas, como Krzysztof Wodiczko, han reflexionado tanto en sus textos como en sus obras acerca de las condiciones favorables para que ellos puedan hablar en el espacio público y ser oídos. En este contexto, realizamos un análisis crítico acerca de un arte público crítico y concientizado, siempre en peligro de ser absorbido e instrumentalizado por el discurso hegemónico capitalista.

Este texto es un trabajo sobre las relaciones transversales entre los conceptos de juego (Gadamer), ironía (Rorty) y ritornelo (Deleuze y Guattari) y sus implicaciones en la producción artística contemporánea tomando como ejemplos tres obras que de algún modo abordan los conceptos de totalidad y complejidad: La Boite-en-Valise de Marcel Duchamp, New Babylon de Constant Nieuwenhuys y El Palacio de los Proyectos de Ilya / Emilia Kabakov

A long essay dealing with the work of Dutch artist Pedro Bakker published in the monographic book publication 'Pedro Bakker - Innocent' (Onomatopee 2016). Order at http://www.onomatopee.net/project.php?progID=d54de0c71338835882e53890178deae1

I start with looking back at Bakker's work made during a residency stay alongside the amsterdam highway organized by Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam in 2006. Through series of works, mainly large scale drawings, such as 'To Draw Politically' featuring a controversial representation of the assassinated Theo van Gogh, I finish with an expose on Bakker's series of works around Madame Mao. The latter text was printed as a separate insert to avoid censorship in China, where the book is also published.

Text in English and Chinese.
Thanks to Pedro Bakker, Hanne Hagenaars and Laurens ten Kate!

« Présenter des éclats du réel, dénoncer la réalité : de l'opposition entre deux théâtres documentaires aujourd'hui (Rwanda 94 et Rimini Protokoll) », in Lucie Kempf et Tania Moguilevskaia (dir.), Le Théâtre documentaire. Résurgence ou réinvention ?, Nancy, Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2013, p. 45-59.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

How are we to describe selected paintings and artists concerned with the evening, along with small communities or sociocultural groups coming together in the twilight founded on apparently esoteric hunting beliefs? In the first sense, we might think of paintings such as Joy Garnett’s Crepuscular Dawn, Shade, or Beacon, or of our appreciation for an apparition of an unidentified terrain, such as Arbor. Here, the terminology of vespertine connotes an enthusiasm for, and insider knowledge of, certain paintings or painters of the stars and their motions, such as Shields, on the River Tyne by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1823) or Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh (1888). The paradox is that such paintings and painters can have a simultaneously wide and specialist appreciation, although sunset tends usually to designate that powerful and seemingly fragrant portion of the day. In practice, understanding sunset in this sense is close to being an animal. The proof or mutual reinforcement of nightfall, of membership of those communities who appear at, or are active at, sundown, means that, say, hyenas, wolves, and frogs take the form of the “look” of the evening, of the nocturnal gesture, or even of one’s own knowledge of the gods, heaven, or the planets. Garnett’s almost shot-by-shot studies of the Crepuscular Dawn are characterized by their depiction of the setting at, or just after, sunset—cosmic events that have been logged in the encyclopedia of the stars and planets for millennia. Such paintings provoke an intense emotion of recognition of the earth and the desire for the endless repetition of the rising and setting of the sun. Yet these feelings can only be gratified by continually re-viewing the late afternoon covered with the sun’s rays, the witnessing of planets setting after the sun and the sun’s fullness, the construction of new imaginary planets and new imaginary suns by which the adepts recognize through each other a shared experience of the cusp of the day. A perfect painting, we may say, remains in our geological memory as a whole formation. However, Garnett’s paintings feature sporadically inhabited militarized topographies and susceptible living beings, and must live separately, not as an area of canvas or numerous patches of night-vision green and black but as a kind of evening prayer or evensong concerning both the menace of killer technologies and the paintings’ glorious relationship to the evening.[...]

Catatan kritis ini dimulai dengan pertanyaan-pertanyaan disertai dengan jawaban maupun pernyataan-pernyataan sehingga memudahkan kita semua untuk “membongkar” pemahaman-pemahaman dan tindakan manipulatif demi melanggengkan Revitalisasi Pusat Kesenian Jakarta Taman Ismail Marzuki (PKJ-TIM) yang tidak melibatkan publik seniman dalam proses perencanaannya. Pada akhirnya dalam pelaksanaannya terdapat sejumlah masalah, termasuk menerjemahkan konsep revitalisasi dari kegiatan perencanaan dengan pelaksanaan. Revitalisasi yang seharusnya 'memvitalkan' kembali fisik bangunan yang ada dengan cara memperbaiki dan menambahkan jika belum ada, namun kenyataannya menghancurkan bangunan yang ada, bahkan dianggap memiliki nilai sejarah tinggi bagi para seniman. Demikian Revitalisasi non-fisik dalam prakteknya ditujukan pada kegiatan komersialisasi yang bertolak belakang dengan Marwah Kesenian.

This paper offers a critical history of the self-proclaimed "Art Strike" as a political tactic, artistic performance, social practice, and philosophical exercise. Artists discussed include Robert Morris, Lee Lozano, Gustav Metzger, Goran Djordjevic, Stewart Home, and Claire Fontaine. Surveys a history of artists going on strike and their shifting political, and artistic, orientations.

In Deaf West’s Broadway revival of Spring Awakening, embodied gestures expose and challenge representational and infrastructural norms that drive commercial musical theatre. The company’s blend of ASL and spoken text extends the overarching message about failed sociocultural ideals to the realm of deaf culture. Micro-practical actions and interactions function tacitly to denaturalize audio-centric standards that guide theatrical reception, internal cueing, and technical production.