Functional and Dysfunctional Relations of Art, Science, and Health

Abstract

With this text, I intend to theoretically interpret the relations between historical and contemporary art, science, and health through the modalities of politics, ethics, and aesthetics. The first hypothesis points to the possibilities of the historical construction of discourse and visual representations of confronting the actions of biopolitics, necropolitics, and politics in a critical relationship between art, science, and health. The understanding of biopolitical and necropolitical functions and effects of science and medicine are re-examined, tested, and critically revealed in modern and contemporary artistic research. I will point to different functional and interventional modes of art: art as a symptom, art as a critical practice, art as a subversive practice and, most importantly, art as an emancipatory practice. I am interested in special cases: artistic provocations or subversion of ethical norms, activist questions about universal human and planetary ethical norms, and critical limits of medical morality and ethics.