scholarly journals The Case of Hypothetical Art: From Philosophy of Art to Contemporary Art Practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-188
Author(s):  
Jurij Selan
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Art Practice

scholarly journals Contemporary Art Practice and Indigenous Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Gerald McMaster
Keyword(s):  
Medicinal Plants ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Communal Sharing ◽  
Cultural Hero ◽  
The Way

AbstractIndigenous artists are introducing traditional knowledge practices to the contemporary art world. This article discusses the work of selected Indigenous artists and relays their contribution towards changing art discourses and understandings of Indigenous knowledge. Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau led the way by introducing ancient mythos; the gifted Carl Beam enlarged his oeuvre with ancient building practices; Peter Clair connected traditional Mi'kmaq craft and colonial influence in contemporary basketry; and Edward Poitras brought to life the cultural hero Coyote. More recently, Beau Dick has surprised international art audiences with his masks; Christi Belcourt’s studies of medicinal plants take on new meaning in paintings; Bonnie Devine creates stories around canoes and baskets; Adrian Stimson performs the trickster/ruse myth in the guise of a two-spirited character; and Lisa Myers’s work with the communal sharing of food typifies a younger generation of artists re-engaging with traditional knowledge.

scholarly journals Being-with: Access to Relation, Participation, and Togetherness in Contemporary Art

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Valberg
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Relational Practices ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Specific Setting

Being-with is an artistically based research project aimed at applying and studying participatory and relational practices within the arts as well as addressing the esthetical and ethical questions that such practices generate. The participants in Being-with – researchers and artists as well as children, parents, grandparents, siblings and other residents in the small town of Høvåg in Norway – gathered weekly for half a year to experience how aesthetic production may interact with social space and vice versa. The article reflects on what consequences such interaction may have for the conception of art, and its arenas and agendas … when we consider art not only as a reflection of our lives, but also as an agent shaping our lives and changing the social surroundings we are part of. The article relates discourses of aesthetics penned by continental philosophers over the last 50 years to a specific setting in a Nordic contemporary art practice.

Clive Bell’s "Metaphysical Hypothesis" and Everyday Aesthetics

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Thomas Leddy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Deep Meaning ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Formal Properties

Clive Bell’s Art, published in 1913, is widely seen as a founding document in contemporary aesthetics. Yet his formalism and his attendant definition of art as “significant form” is widely rejected in contemporary art discourse and in the philosophy of art. In this paper I argue for a reconsideration of his thought in connection with current discussions of “the aesthetics of everyday life.” Although some, notably Allen Carlson, have argued against application of Bell’s formalism to the aesthetics of everyday life, I claim that this is based on an interpretation of the concept that is overly narrow. First, Li Zehou offers an interpretation of “significant form” that allows in sedimented social meaning. Second, Bell himself offers a more complex theory of significant form by way of his “metaphysical hypothesis,” one that stresses perception of significant form outside the realm of art (for example in nature or in everyday life). Bell’s idea that the artist can perceive significant form in nature allows for significant form to not just be the surface-level formal properties of things. It stresses depth, although a different kind than the cognitive scientific depth Carlson wants. This is a depth that is consistent with the anti-dualism of Spinoza, Marx and Dewey. Reinterpreting Bell in this direction, we can say we are moved by certain relations of lines and colors because they direct our minds to the hidden aspect of things, the spiritual side of the material world referred to by Spinoza and developed by Dewey in his concept of experience. Bell hardly “reduces the everyday to a shadow of itself,” as Carlson puts it, since the everyday, as experienced by the artist or the aesthetically astute observer, has, or potentially has, deep meaning. If we reject Bell’s dualism and his downgrading of sensuous experience, we can rework his idea of pure form to refer to an aspect of things detached, yes, from practical use, but not from particularity or sedimented meaning, not purified of all associations.

Representing, Performing and Mitigating Climate Change in Contemporary Art Practice

Leonardo ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Giannachi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Public

Over the last quarter-century, an increasing number of artists have been variously engaging the public in artworks addressing the anthropogenic phenomenon known as climate change. Focusing specifically on works developed in the fields of visual arts, performance and new media, and on a body of theory attempting to distinguish between terms such as nature, landscape, weather, climate and environment, this article aims to offer an exploration of how these works, by adopting, often concurrently, three strategies—representation, performance and mitigation—affect our understanding of our changing relationship to nature and climate.

scholarly journals It’s All in the Reading

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Déirdre Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

It seems inherent in the nature of contemporary artist’s book production to continue to question the context for the genre in contemporary art practice, notwithstanding the medium’s potential for dissemination via mass production and an unquestionable advantage of portability for distribution. Artists, curators and editors operating in this sector look to create contexts for books in a variety of imaginative ways, through exhibition, commission, installations, performance and, of course as documentation. Broadening the discussion of the idea of the book within contemporary art practice, this paper examines the presence and role of book works within the context of the art biennale, in particular the Venice Art Biennale of which the 58th iteration (2019) is entitled ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’ and curated by Ralph Rugoff, with an overview of the independent International cultural offerings and the function of the ‘Book Pavilion’. Venetian museums and institutions continue to present vibrant diverse works within the arena of large-scale exhibitions, recognising the position that the book occupies in the history of the city. This year, the appearance for the first time, of ‘Book Biennale’, opens up a new and interesting dialogue, taking the measure of how the book is being promoted and its particular function for visual communication within the arts in Venice and beyond.

A Breathing Space for Aesthetics and Politics: An Introduction to Jacques Rancière

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 5-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Papastergiadis
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Breathing Space ◽  
Jacques Rancière

Jacques Rancière is one of the central figures in the contemporary debates on aesthetics and politics. This introduction maps the shift of focus in Rancière’s writing from political theory to contemporary art practice and also traces the enduring interest in ideas on equality and creativity. It situates Rancière’s rich body of writing in relation to key theorists such as the philosopher Alain Badiou, art historian Terry Smith and anthropologist George E. Marcus. I argue that Rancière offers a distinctive approach in this broad field by clarifying the specificity of the artist’s task in the production of critical and creative transformation, or what he calls the ‘distribution of the sensible’. In conclusion, I complement Rancière’s invocation to break out of the oppositional paradigm in which the political and aesthetic are usually confined by outlining some further methodological techniques for addressing contemporary art.

scholarly journals Revising Postsocialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Global And Local

This article reflects on the current explanatory value of concepts such as postsocialism and Eastern Europe by exploring how they are represented in contemporary art projects in Estonia. Through an overview of recent exhibitions in which I collaborated with local artists and curators, the research considers generational differences in relation to cultural discourses of the postsocialist experience. Methodologically, artists and curators were not simply my informants in the field, but makers of analytical knowledge themselves in their practice. Exhibitions were also approached as contact zones, whereby new cultural forms are simultaneously reflected and constructed. Critically, this inquiry gathers new ways of representing and conceptualising cultural changes in Estonia and novel perspectives of interpreting the relations to the Soviet past. The focus is put on art practice because of its capacity of bringing together global and local frames of reference simultaneously. The research also draws attention to the inbetweenness of the first post-Soviet generation (those born near the time of the breakup of the USSR); they are revising established cultural forms as well as historical representations through mixing practices, and therefore updating traditional ideas of identity and attachment to places.

scholarly journals Good Vibrations: Living with the Motions of our Unsettled Planet

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamsin Badcoe ◽  
Ophelia Ann George ◽  
Lucy Donkin ◽  
Shirley Pegna ◽  
John Michael Kendall
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Broadband Seismometer ◽  
Continuous Basis ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
Large Earthquakes

Abstract. Historical commentary in the aftermath of large earthquakes has frequently noted unscheduled ringing of church bells excited by the shaking around them. These purported unscheduled bell ringing events were caused not only by near earthquakes but also by distant incidents. To investigate this phenomenon, as part of the Brigstow Institute funded Unsettled Planet Project, we installed a state-of-the-art broadband seismometer in the Wills Memorial Building tower to record how Great George (the tower bell) responds to the restless world around him. The installed seismometer has been recording activity around and within the tower on a near continuous basis since 23 March 2018. Here, we present the signals recorded by the seismometer as Great George overlooks the hustle and bustle of the city around him and investigate how connected we are to our unsettled planet, even from our tectonically quiet setting in Bristol. We find that the seismometer not only shows the hem and haw of activity in and around Bristol, but also brings to light earthquakes from as nearby as Lincolnshire, UK, or as far away as Fiji ~ halfway around the world. In order to contextualise our findings, our project also considers what determines how people have responded to earth shaking events, drawing on both historical and recent examples, and looks to contemporary art practice in order to consider how an awareness of our unsettled planet can be communicated in new ways.

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