scholarly journals Art and the Public Sphere: From controversy to opinion formation in the making of contemporary art

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Mel Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Interview with Mette Ingvartsen

Maska ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (200) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
Dragana Alfirević
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art

The author interviews the renowned Danish choreographer and performer Mette Ingvartsen on occasion of her visit to Ljubljana, where she performed her pieces 69 Positions and 21 Pornographies by invitation of the program Forms of performing initiated by the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova and Mladinsko theatre. The conversation tackles topics such as sexuality and nudity in relation to the public sphere; affects and desire, hijacked by capitalism; rehearsing revolt in safe artistic situations and other themes.

scholarly journals The phenomenon of conflicts around art in the context of the contemporary public sphere

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-280
Author(s):  
Karolina-Dzhoanna Gomes ◽  
◽  
Tatyana A. Kruglova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Art World ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
The Public ◽  
Educational Paradigm ◽  
The Public Sphere

The article examines a new type of conflict in the form of public protests against contemporary art that appeared at the end of the 20th — beginning of the 21st century. Typical signs of contemporary conflicts are highlighted: the discourse of the offense is central, the protests are usually organized and collective, accusations are brought against art institutions, and collec-tive affective reactions and symbolic violence often become forms of conflict interaction. In the article, protests against contemporary art are examined through the prism of the analysis of the public as an actor in the conflict, transformations of the public sphere and relations in it as an autonomous field of art (the “art world”) and the fields of influence of other social forces. Relations between the art world and the public go beyond the framework of the educational paradigm, which was dominated by asymmetry and passive influence of consumers on the dynamics of the artistic field. The activization of a part of the public, for which the consumption of contemporary art is not a cultural norm, indicates that the origins of the conflict cannot be explained by the rules of artistic communication that has developed in modern society. Contemporary art spaces are turning into noticeable and important places for the manifestation of social tension and political struggle. Art in the public sphere is becoming the space of vulnerability (J. Butler). It is substantiated that one of the factors in the activation of public conflicts was a change in the structure of the side of the conflict which we call the “public” as opposed to the “audience of art”. In the framework of the concept of the public sphere as an agonistic space (Ch. Mouffe), the need for a review of the value orientations of art institutions and strategies for their interaction with the public is constituted.

scholarly journals Pervasive death: Teresa Margolles and the space of the corpse

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Bacal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Air Conditioners ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City ◽  
Inside Out

I focus on two contemporary art installations in which Teresa Margolles employs water used to wash corpses during autopsies. By running this water through a fog machine or through air conditioners, these works incorporate bodily matter but refuse to depict, identify or locate anybody (or any body) within it. Rather, Margolles creates abstract works in which physical limits – whether of bodies or of art works – dissolve into a state of indeterminacy. With that pervasive distribution of corporeal matter, Margolles charts the dissolution of the social, political and spatial borders that contain death from the public sphere. In discussing these works, I consider Margolles’ practice in relation to the social and aesthetic function of the morgue. Specifically, I consider how Margolles turns the morgue inside out, opening it upon the city in order to explore the inoperative distinctions between spaces of sociality and those of death. In turn, I consider how Margolles places viewers in uneasy proximity to mortality, bodily abjection and violence in order to illustrate the social, political and aesthetic conditions by which bodies become unidentifiable. I ultimately argue that her aesthetic strategies match her ethical aspirations to reconsider relations to death, violence and loss within the social realm.

scholarly journals Public Service Broadcasting and the Public Sphere: Normative Arguments from Habermasian Theory

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Ramsey
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theoretical Category ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Uk

Discussing Public Service Broadcasting from the perspective of the public sphere has both historical form and theoretical rationale. This article surveys some of the arguments forwarded on the commonality between the theoretical category of the public sphere, and Public Service Broadcasting (PSB). Drawing from scholarly work over the past three decades, it also addresses the problems with this approach, outlining an argument against applying public sphere theory in this setting. This article then applies normative arguments drawn from Habermasian theory to the subject, arguing that public sphere theory remains a critical tool for studying PSB. This article suggests that on the public sphere principles of inclusion, deliberation and opinion formation, PSB helps sustain the notion of the public sphere, and indeed provides one of the most important realisations of it. In particular, this article focuses on PSB in the UK, and gives evidence from the case of the BBC to support its claims.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

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