Naslov (eng)

Manipulating Memory and Mourning in Post-socialist Art

Autor

Matejić, Bojana

Opis (eng)

Abstract: When it comes to global contemporary art practice, thepresent-day humanitarian discourse abounds in a variety of self-ex-planatory notions and imperatives such as: political art, commu-nity-based art, post-studio practices, participatory art, contextualart, socially engaged art, collaborative art, interactive art. It longago became apparent that artistic practice can no longer revolvearound producing objects for consumption by a passive audience,but must take an active part in interfacing with social reality. In per-ceiving the modality of a work of art and artistic practice, such achange goes hand in hand with the post-Fordist economic changesand the immaterial and flexible labour imperatives. Claire Bishophas already extensively depicted such artistic phenomena in severalof her publications.Since the early 90s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, wehave been informed that we ought to be involved with the humaniststruggle for the ‘politics of human rights’, and for ‘Art against terror-ism’, or engaged with social groups and minorities with the aim ofintegrating them into a ‘legal  sphere’ of life. The humanitarian/hu-manist imperative, present in everyday political discourse, art andculture, presupposes an opposition between good and evil, where artas a human, humanist and humanitarian activity, is supposed to as-sume a ‘responsible’ role. In the view of such rhetoric, Art must be‘political’, ‘socially engaged’ and ‘participatory’, to the extent that it indicates the sharp distinction between the places of violence andthose of justice. However, as Marx indicated so many times, the divi-sion between those who have the right to be seen (the ‘polis’, or publicsphere) and those who do not have a right to a voice (private sphere),assents to social division as such, as well as a rather contingent eth-ical contraposition between good and evil. Humanitarianism/Hu-manism in art only affirms the existing democratic phraseology. Thehumanitarian/humanist regime of art validates a separation betweencivil society and the abstract society of political equality. Therefore,the aim of this paper is to trace the conceptual distinction betweenthe humanitarian ideology of the current time in the post-socialistcontext of art and culture, and the thinking and practical applicationof the concept of the dehumanisation of art.The manuscript consists of three parts: In the first part, I will re-call Adorno’s thesis regarding the ‘after-Auschwitz’ ethic of repre-sentation; in the second part, I will discuss the controversy and theimplementation of this thesis following 9/11 as related to culture;and finally, in the third part, I will address the issue of how this the-sis, as the main current ideological weapon, conditions the contem-porary state of affairs in the post-socialist spaces of art and culture,by indicating several key symptoms in artistic production.

Jezik

engleski

Datum

2017

Licenca

© All rights reserved

Predmet

Keywords:humanitarianism, humanism, dehumanisation of art, post-socialism, emancipation, 9/11

Deo kolekcije (1)

o:29159

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