Projects / Programmes
Artistic Practices of the Twentieth and the Tweny-First Centuries and the Political
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.10.00 |
Humanities |
Philosophy |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H120 |
Humanities |
Systematic philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, ideology |
artistic practices, the political, the aesthetic, Alain Badiou, the biopolitical, Gilles Deleuze, potentiality, regimes of visibility and of the sensible
Researchers (8)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
a. In the philosophical and critical discussions of artistic practices an enormous change has occurred in the last two decades, for with the demise of the major theoretical narratives of the 20th century not only the previous status of art and of its practices but also their relation to politics and the political became questionable, for the character and the meaning of the latter two have also been modified. The aesthetic project of critique and utopianism, on which art since romanticism was erected, became (and remains) radically questionable.
b.
c. The aim of the research project is thus to research, on the basis of the mentioned views, the contemporary relation between artistic practices and the political. In this endeavor special attention will be given to the following notions and their conceptualizations: artistic practices, aesthetic practices, art as an event, politics, the political, hegemony, political event, the partition of the sensible, and the possibility and impossibility of a community. As a connecting element between the modern and the postmodern epochs, the concepts of truth and its status (especially in Badiou, Rancière, Adorno, and Heidegger) will be employed.
d.
e. Within the framework of the research of the links between philosophy and art, we will also research regimes of visibility, the image, fiction, and the illusion, all in relation to the problem of the sensible and sensation as pleasure, the affect, and the brutal. In this conjunction of the visible and the sensible it is possible to show the social and political consequences of art.
f.
A further aim of the research project will be: (a) to analyze and conceptualize, from a comparative, historical, and critical-philosophical aspect, various practical forms of the interrelationships between artistic practices and the political, as well as various interpretations of this relation; in this way we will attempt to achieve a critical analysis of the contemporary situation and tentatively point to possible trends; (b) to articulate conceptually different paths and modi in which philosophy and art are immanently political; to rethink the levers of influence on social and symbolic mechanisms which determine us; to propose a concept of immanence that will be compatible with such positions.
Significance for science
Research project returns to and rearticulates a question that was one of the crucial themes in the first half of the previous century. Due to the end of a uniform History, of the ontologically founded social class, whose struggle was purportedly the “engine of history” (L. Althusser) and the emergence of contemporary particularisms and particularities, the relation between artistic practices and society no longer takes place through politics but as a constitutive part of the political – as well as in opposition to it. The problem of artistic practices and the political in this and in the past centuries is being approached by transforming the very realm of the problematics. We point to the inherent connection between the political and art, thereby answering the question of the contemporary status of art in light of the political and vice versa.
We also research the problematics of the visible, the gaze, the image, the illusion and the simulacrum, and connect it to the problems of the real, affect, the excessive, and of pleasure and enjoyment. We conceptually research various connecting points between philosophy, psychoanalysis, art, and politics, thereby offering new insights regarding these realms of the humanities in light of the relation between artistic practices and the political.
The thematics of the research project connects two realms of social activity: art and culture on the one hand, and the political and politics, on the other. Since past (modernist) solutions and explanations of this relation no longer suffice – something witnessed also by the decreased import of artistic practices in contemporary societies and thus by the search for their “social” relevance – it is necessary to rethink anew the relation of contemporary artistic strategies to the political. This need arises also because artistic strategies and the political today do not concern only the realm of “culture” but are part and parcel of the contemporary global rethinking and reconsideration of both our contemporaneity and the previous century.
The research project is to be of import also for a reconsideration of the content of contemporary cultural heritage, of its taxonomy and contemporary possibilities of interpreting and articulating the relation between the national, the local, the regional, the global, and the universal: where in this context does the political appear and in what relation to the political and to this context are the artistic strategies of the past century?
The successfully realized project can represent an important contribution to contemporary discussions about the political and politics, as two concepts that in recent decades underwent fundamental changes within the European Union and within a broader global context. On this basis the relation of the political to the artistic practices is being researched, practices which especially since the eighties have been losing their avant-garde and socially subversive significance, exclusivity, and “overvaluation” and purportedly started to become an integral part of the capitalist universe.
The research project is to bring together two realms of research: the political and the artistic practices of contemporaneity and recent history, in order to allow us to research anew this syntagm which in the first half of the 20th century had not only an extraordinary philosophical and theoretical significance, but also practical political and social ones. This relevance was expressed through theoretical and political debates regarding realism, avant-garde art, expressionism, political and partisan art, theory of reflection, etc. Today this relation can be conceptualized with the aid of novel philosophical discoveries and developments.
Significance for the country
The submitted research project, which belongs to the realm of the humanities, concerns one of the crucial segments of contemporary society. The relationship between artistic practices and the political concerns the articulation of social aims and values, making the project a contribution to social cohesiveness: every society and community must find ways of expressing its “visions of the world” and it is precisely art works that are one of the key ways in which these visions were articulated in modernity. “Visions” in this context denote representations, ideas, and the realm of the poetic, aesthetic, utopian, and creative, all of which is of existential import to every social community, but is, at the same time, also a realm of the conflictual and the political. The “political” as it is conceptualized in the research project, thus denotes the dimension of antagonism which is constitutive of human societies. Artistic practices are one of the ways of articulating this antagonism. Its recognition and the recognition of the ways in which such an articulation occur, is of crucial import for the factual cohesiveness of a community.
The project, the aim of which is mostly to contribute to the basic knowledge about humans and society, contributes to the development of independent and autonomous scientific work and humanity and serves as the basis for the educational process on all three levels of university education. Because of the specific issues that is the object of research, the project and its results contribute to the development of contemporary democratic society.
Through the pedagogical process the project contribute to education aimed at continuous development and the future in an atmosphere of creativity, curiosity, critique, the consciousness of the import of one's own knowledge, and a healthy self-assurance, cooperation, and team work.
The project contributes to enhancing a closer connection between culture, science, and education with the aim of heightening the quality of teaching and research and thereby supporting the abilities and creativity of the individual.
Since in contemporary artistic strategies what is at issue is predominantly the use of new technologies, the technologically inventive moment is an especially important segment of new artistic practices: from the use of computer technology to the linkage of the natural sciences and the arts (as, for example, in bioart or in combinations of astronautics and theater) the realm of art once again reveals itself as a space of experimentation and the discovery of new potentials of technological advancements, among these primarily those that concern information technologies.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2008,
2009,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2008,
2009,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
