{"title":"The politics of arrival: Israeli borderscapes and the boundaries of artistic space in Emi Sfard’s Invasive Species","authors":"Noa Roei","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2021.1929756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2021.1929756","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores ecologically-inflected conceptions of home and belonging through a detailed study of Invasive Species (2017), an immersive media installation by emerging artist Emi Sfard. The installation comprises two interactive video works created with the help of 3D computer programs that can be updated in real time. Both works relate in different ways to Israeli landscape imaginaries, and examine the hidden relations between human and non-human “border crossers” that contribute to the way in which the national contours of the state of Israel are sustained, on material, aesthetic and conceptual levels. As I will argue, the installation’s critical edge resides in part in its refusal to remain within the picture plane, implicating spectators in the depicted images through gaming technologies, and so interspersing questions of national boundaries with those of the borders of the gallery space","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2021.1929756","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45390561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poetic objectification of a shattered subject: the alchemical poetry of Josep Palau i Fabre","authors":"Sergi Castella-Martinez","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2021.1909314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2021.1909314","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A number of modern poets have presented their works as an alchemical endeavor. Their verses display the hermeneutical clues of an analogy that elaborates on a heterodox ancestral practice and that simultaneously assumes poetry’s experimental nature. Alchemical poetology constitutes thus a specific alternative of contemporary poetic expression, and it stands out for its elements’ material treatment. The article describes and exemplifies various procedures of poetic objectification through which Josep Palau i Fabre’s works between 1937 and 1952 dissolve the traditional distance between object and subject and compose a world of objects where words, sounds and meanings arbitrarily collide beyond any subjective assessment. The material and practical aspects of an alchemical poetology lead thus to a reassessment of the objective shift of Aesthetics derived from the philosophical shattering of the subject, since the poetic elements and the poems themselves manifest the inaccessibility of any complete subjective experience of the objects, independently of their form and condition. The main goal of the article is to contribute on providing a clearer description of the nuanced belief that brings together an alchemical poetology and experimental poetics. The intuition of the world’s horizontal and arbitrary order manifests in the accumulative and apparently unsuccessful poetic attempts of attaining the actual, most authentic self. The alchemical condition of poetry consists in the succession and collision of images that are not bound to conceptual representation, but that rather reflect their status as essays, as fragments of an ongoing experiment that would be inert should its material condition and its inexpressible core not always be considered. Only in the succession and accumulation of such images finds Palau i Fabre’s alchemical poetry its consummation, faithful to the plurality and inconformity of all metaphors, and always pushed to further approaches, to endless experimentation.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2021.1909314","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46098577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cosmos and nomos: cosmopolitanism in art and political philosophy","authors":"N. Papastergiadis","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2021.1980991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2021.1980991","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article I address the tensions between normative political philosophy and aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida have been two of the most influential philosophers to engage with the political and ethical questions of cosmopolitanism. Habermas has drawn on the foundations established by Immanuel Kant and set out to define an institutional framework that could secure the rights of people in an age of mobility. Derrida’s emphasis is more heavily slanted to ethical relations rather than geo-political structures. He reversed Kant’s starting point, by placing the exposure to the other and the necessity of hospitality as the basis of freedom and truth. While both Habermas and Derrida have developed their political philosophy by working in close touch with Kant, the transcendental aspects of his thinking is now totally absent in the contemporary debates. As a general rule political philosophy has averted its gaze from the cosmos, and more generally it has to be noted that it has bracketed the founding philosophical concepts of aesthetics and physis. The focus is mostly on the terrain of anthropos, polis and the nomos. In short, the discussion begins and ends within the normative parameters of cosmopolitanism. By contrast, artists from the pioneering modernists like Malevich to contemporary figures such as Saraceno have never abandoned the quest for cosmogony. The ethical orientation of aesthetic cosmopolitanism appears to co-exist with a wider claim of belonging to the cosmos. In this article I contrast the orientation and scope of thinking between normative and aesthetic cosmopolitanism in order to reframe the spheres of connections in contemporary thought.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49554790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public art projects in exposed social housing areas in Denmark – dilemmas and potentials","authors":"B. Eriksson, A. Sørensen","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2021.1972527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2021.1972527","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Western European cultural policies increasingly target marginalized and socially deprived communities. In Denmark, this happens in the political and discursive context of the so-called “ghetto act” (2018), a set of laws and amendments aimed at radically changing low-income public housing neighbourhoods with a high percentage of “non-Western” residents. Consequential, several Danish public housing neighbourhoods undergo drastic renovation and demolition. Simultaneously, cultural governing bodies and institutions approach the neighbourhoods with a variety of publicly funded projects in arts and culture. These are part of a general strategy to reach new audiences / user groups by supporting art manifestations outside the formal art institutions but also of a more specific betterment agenda based on the assumption that the deprived social housing areas can be “elevated” through art and cultural projects. Based on research in four Danish social housing areas in urban margins, the article introduces the social and cultural policies targeting the areas. We identify a triple exposure to social inequality, stigmatization and intervention, and ask how public art projects in the areas interact with and may resist this exposure. From the perspective of Chantal Mouffe’s notions of antagonistic politics and dissensual artistic practices, we explore a range of public art projects in four selected social housing areas, and identify four different types of art projects: 1) permanent physical interventions, 2) temporary (re)makings of the neighbourhood, 3) reinforcement of creative skills and agency, and 4) co-inhabitation. Presenting cases from each of these four types, we outline their challenges and potentials. Finally, we discuss how they fit into and/or negotiate the “betterment” agenda and the seemingly neutral vision of the mixed, balanced, or creative city.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44387114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A new image of man”: Harun Farocki and cinema as chiro-praxis","authors":"H. Gustafsson","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2020.1841977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1841977","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In Harun Farocki’s lifelong study of the mute language of manual expressions, the human hand is explored not only as a versatile tool, but as a repository of social memory, a topos in the genealogy of the moving image, and a critical agent in the theory and practice of filmmaking itself. While cinema distinguished itself from previous artistic media through its capacity to salvage and store everyday gestures for later scrutiny, accruing a Bilderschatz for future anthropological and archaeological research, it was also integral to an ongoing process that spurred the progressive withdrawal of the human hand from the manufacturing of images. By adopting a double-pronged approach that considers the programming of bodies and images as integrally aligned, the article traces the gradual demise of craftsmanship and the increasing automation of imaging and perception as engaged across a wide range of Farocki’s essay films, found-footage compilations and observational documentaries. Taken together, this body of work at once proffers an encyclopedia of gesturing hands, a form of chiro-praxis in its own right, and a search for alternative or forgotten modes of manual communication and collective imagination. Graphical abstract","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2020.1841977","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48678549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Machinic enculturation, copyright bots, and the aesthetics of composing mashups for machines","authors":"Miles C. Coleman, Mark Anthoney","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2020.1831841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1831841","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Sample-based media producers compose their art for machines. They implement aural effects and editing techniques to their source media, which very directly affect the sound of their music, but the aesthetics of which are not aimed at human ears; they are aimed at convincing copyright bots their media is not worth “flagging.” We offer machinic enculturation as a term descriptive of the phenomenon of adapting one’s media practices to machinic audiences. Then, using the basic operations of rhetoric (addition, omission, transposition, and transmutation) and a stylistic framework (antithesis, apostrophe, and reasoning by question and answer), we demonstrate a born-digital aesthetic, moored in the rhetorical prowess of some producers as they compose their music for copyright bots.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2020.1831841","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49006826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Feeling the past: an emotional reflection on an archive","authors":"Erika Larsson","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2020.1810476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1810476","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article looks at the photographic parts of the archive of racial biology in Uppsala, Sweden. This material is approached both through works by Swedish Sámi artist Katarina Pirak Sikku as well as through close engagements with the archive itself and its historical circumstances. In the article, the focus is on affective and emotional relations to the archival photographs and the events of their creation. I argue that Pirak Sikku’s profound emotional and physical working through of this material has opened a path for others to engage with this archive beyond only seeing it as a concretisation of a highly problematic and dangerous “scientific” practice. Furthermore, I suggest that examining the emotional, embodied and affective aspects is necessary to achieve further understanding not only of this particular archive, but also of harrowing periods of history in general. Finally, I show how an engagement such as that by Pirak Sikku is able to open up perspectives from which care and inquisitiveness can be seen to triumph over even the deepest injustices.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2020.1810476","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48023074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aesthetic injustice","authors":"Gustavo H. Dalaqua","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2020.1712183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1712183","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, the author advances the concept of aesthetic injustice, which denotes any harm done to someone specifically in her capacity as an aesthetic being, and explores four dimensions of this new philosophical concept. First, the author appeals to the notion of colonial mentality presented by Amílcar Cabral in order to show how aesthetic injustice is experienced differently by the oppressors and the oppressed. Then, the author engages critically with Augusto Boal’s The Aesthetics of the Oppressed and underscores the mutual influence between aesthetic injustice and epistemic injustice. Next, the author suggests how both types of injustice may be resisted by dint of an analysis of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and The Rainbow of Desire. The author concludes by examining how aesthetic injustice is inimical to democracy and by explaining why a democratic regime requires aesthetic justice, a normative concept according to which all citizens are equally entitled to have their way of seeing and feeling about public issues taken into account in political deliberation.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2020.1712183","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48323111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stand-up comedy as a hallmark of western culture","authors":"Anna Kawalec","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2020.1788753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1788753","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article examines stand-up comedy in view of the symptoms of Western culture that constitute the environment in which this artistic expression has matured. These systems of Western culture include: 1) the world of spectacles, 2) the dialectic and current domination of comedy over tragedy in Western culture, 3) the cathartic sources of performing arts genres, 4) the cult of art and the artist in Western culture, including the stand-up artist, and the Greek category of hubris, and 5) the function and value of stand-up comedy in Western culture and “comedy” in “dividual societies”. To expound this comparative cultural approach, which is rarely applied to stand-up comedy, I draw upon selected cultural examples, such as the rituals of some Native American tribes (Cochiti, USA; and Kamëntšá, Colombia) along with their stand on art and ethics and contrapose this with the performance “Koniec świata” (“The End of the World”) by the Polish comedy group Stand-up Polska (autumn 2019). By setting these examples in the historical context of the genesis of stand-up comedy and the cultural context of the development of communities unburdened by the individualistic and “progressive” ambitions of Western culture, I argue the position that stand-up comedy, like the initial comedy genre, abides by the goal of moral perfecting.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2020.1788753","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44734279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Art criticism and the newness of video art: the reception of video art in the Swedish daily press, 1985–1991","authors":"Anna Orrghen","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2020.1729539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1729539","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to present and examine how art criticism in the Swedish daily press has dealt with video art as a new art form. The article argues that art criticism is challenged by having to deal with video art as a new art form. By paying attention to how the “identity crisis” of video art is represented in art criticism covering the four exhibitions Video/Art/Video, U-media, Japan nu/Sverige nu and Interface, as well as how the inherent properties of the printed press are used in this negotiation, this article shows that the art criticism contains a range of journalistic genres, makes use of art-historical and technological references and investigates the inherent properties of video art. The article further shows that the art criticism is primarily concerned with formal aspects of video art and that the medium specificity of the printed press is particularly salient. By comparing the specific Swedish situation with the international reception of video art as a new art form, I show that, in spite of the difference in date, they are indeed similar. Finally, by relating the reception of video art as a new art form to that of photography during the mid 19th century and digital art at beginning of the 21st century, I further show that the identity crisis of video art is similar to earlier as well as later identity crises of new technological art forms.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2020.1729539","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45528976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}