This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and develop the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image.
{"title":"Action and Relation: Toward a New Theory of the Image","authors":"Helen Petrovsky","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and develop the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128711033","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}
Artistic activism intervenes in, and through, culture to animate ideas with emotions—charge them with affect—to motivate action, and change material conditions. Artistic activism also animates lived experience through emotions and, through its representation, gives rise to ideas and ideals. Yet we have no theory of change for how this might work. This article provides a model to think through and reflect upon “artistic activism,” or whatever name it goes by, as a complex practice that combines the affective power of the arts with the effective aims of activism. This gives us a wide-angle lens with which to see how artistic activism might create change. The model is then applied to a real-world creative activism example: the Undocubus, an intervention by young undocumented immigrants in the southern United States. The model’s macro view aids with thinking through and assessing more specific and necessarily contextual micro theories of change that are applied, consciously or unconsciously, by artistic activists and those they work with. The applied micro-view tests out its alignment with an example of practice. Most importantly, a comprehensive theory of change for artistic activism can provide clarity and direction as to where to intervene to maximize change.
{"title":"A Theory of Change for Artistic Activism","authors":"Stephen Duncombe","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Artistic activism intervenes in, and through, culture to animate ideas with emotions—charge them with affect—to motivate action, and change material conditions. Artistic activism also animates lived experience through emotions and, through its representation, gives rise to ideas and ideals. Yet we have no theory of change for how this might work. This article provides a model to think through and reflect upon “artistic activism,” or whatever name it goes by, as a complex practice that combines the affective power of the arts with the effective aims of activism. This gives us a wide-angle lens with which to see how artistic activism might create change. The model is then applied to a real-world creative activism example: the Undocubus, an intervention by young undocumented immigrants in the southern United States. The model’s macro view aids with thinking through and assessing more specific and necessarily contextual micro theories of change that are applied, consciously or unconsciously, by artistic activists and those they work with. The applied micro-view tests out its alignment with an example of practice. Most importantly, a comprehensive theory of change for artistic activism can provide clarity and direction as to where to intervene to maximize change.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114402384","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}
Abstract Cosmopolitanism seeks a political ethics of world togetherness and a political aesthetics that can contribute to this task critically and imaginatively. Regarding political ethics, I explore the world as a “cosmopolitan mind” composed of “dialogic voices” and threatened by neoliberalism, neofascism, and other nihilistic “oracles.” I also construct a criterion for determining which public artworks (1) resist oracles and (2) help us imagine a “cosmopolitan democracy” and its political ethics. The latter includes the concordance of three ethico-political virtues—solidarity, heterogeneity, and fecundity (creating new voices through the interplay among other voices)—and must appeal to different peoples worldwide. I also examine how this political ethics and aesthetics can be applied to nonhuman life and non-sentient formations in a non-anthropocentric manner; indeed, how the cosmos in its entirety and plurality can also be thought of as voices and participants in the cosmopolitan mind and its artistic expression. Moreover, I contend that my ontology of dialogic voices and proposed public art criterion, like the cosmopolitan mind itself, are “events” or “becomings.” This means that there can never be an articulation of the ontology that is final nor a public art criterion that could curtail the imaginative reach of art.
{"title":"Cosmopolitanism and the Creative Activism of Public Art","authors":"Fred Evans","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cosmopolitanism seeks a political ethics of world togetherness and a political aesthetics that can contribute to this task critically and imaginatively. Regarding political ethics, I explore the world as a “cosmopolitan mind” composed of “dialogic voices” and threatened by neoliberalism, neofascism, and other nihilistic “oracles.” I also construct a criterion for determining which public artworks (1) resist oracles and (2) help us imagine a “cosmopolitan democracy” and its political ethics. The latter includes the concordance of three ethico-political virtues—solidarity, heterogeneity, and fecundity (creating new voices through the interplay among other voices)—and must appeal to different peoples worldwide. I also examine how this political ethics and aesthetics can be applied to nonhuman life and non-sentient formations in a non-anthropocentric manner; indeed, how the cosmos in its entirety and plurality can also be thought of as voices and participants in the cosmopolitan mind and its artistic expression. Moreover, I contend that my ontology of dialogic voices and proposed public art criterion, like the cosmopolitan mind itself, are “events” or “becomings.” This means that there can never be an articulation of the ontology that is final nor a public art criterion that could curtail the imaginative reach of art.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"188 11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135164761","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}
Abstract The premise of this article is straightforward: cheap art as a method and movement, though often ignored in the aesthetics literature, is ideally suited for creative activism. To understand this claim, we must have a working definition of the term "cheap art", which I develop in the first section. In doing so, I focus on four features of cheap art, united by the core idea of anti-elitism, that make it well suited to support creative activism: (1) Cheap art is light, quick, sloppy, and easy to do. (2) Cheap art is made from cheap materials. (3) Cheap art rejects the idea of art as a business created for the artworld elite and aims instead to provide art of the people and for the people. (4) Cheap art challenges its audience members rather than seeking to placate or soothe them. After a brief defense of the claim that cheap art is in fact art, I discuss each aspect in detail, emphasizing its advantages for creative activism. I close with two suggestions for evaluating cheap art, which I argue can be extended to creative activism more broadly.
{"title":"Cheap Art and Creative Activism","authors":"Cathleen Muller","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The premise of this article is straightforward: cheap art as a method and movement, though often ignored in the aesthetics literature, is ideally suited for creative activism. To understand this claim, we must have a working definition of the term \"cheap art\", which I develop in the first section. In doing so, I focus on four features of cheap art, united by the core idea of anti-elitism, that make it well suited to support creative activism: (1) Cheap art is light, quick, sloppy, and easy to do. (2) Cheap art is made from cheap materials. (3) Cheap art rejects the idea of art as a business created for the artworld elite and aims instead to provide art of the people and for the people. (4) Cheap art challenges its audience members rather than seeking to placate or soothe them. After a brief defense of the claim that cheap art is in fact art, I discuss each aspect in detail, emphasizing its advantages for creative activism. I close with two suggestions for evaluating cheap art, which I argue can be extended to creative activism more broadly.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134904092","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":"Correction: Strong Comic Immoralism","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131770128","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}
Abstract This article examines colonialism, the regime of whiteness, and feminism; it sketches possible genealogies of theories and practices in order to design an aesthetic of radicality or a radical aesthetic that is insurgent and defiant, based on histories and knowledge. We know that aesthetics is a colonial formation that historically and currently privileges the white European bourgeois who could speculate on the beautiful and the good, while genocidal practices and slave trade were carried out from European soil in other parts of the world. Similarly, the Shoah, the still unthinkable genocide that happened on European soil in the twentieth century and shaped the European present, is still, at its base, covered by rhetorically empty constructions of aesthetic perception, practices, and theories. A radical aesthetics must realign all these categories, not only with a cynical gesture of inversion but to situate them categorically and ethically elsewhere.
{"title":"Marking Radical Aesthetics in the Time of Racial Capitalism","authors":"Marina Gržinić","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines colonialism, the regime of whiteness, and feminism; it sketches possible genealogies of theories and practices in order to design an aesthetic of radicality or a radical aesthetic that is insurgent and defiant, based on histories and knowledge. We know that aesthetics is a colonial formation that historically and currently privileges the white European bourgeois who could speculate on the beautiful and the good, while genocidal practices and slave trade were carried out from European soil in other parts of the world. Similarly, the Shoah, the still unthinkable genocide that happened on European soil in the twentieth century and shaped the European present, is still, at its base, covered by rhetorically empty constructions of aesthetic perception, practices, and theories. A radical aesthetics must realign all these categories, not only with a cynical gesture of inversion but to situate them categorically and ethically elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135693241","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}
Abstract In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aesthetics of creative activism, we canvas influential scholarship of political aesthetics to sculpt a broad typology of six interconnected mechanisms by which art might intervene in the world. We label these: Documentation, Disruption, Recognition, Participation, Imagination, and Beauty. Each has a compelling tradition of theory and application, augmented, extended, and sometimes challenged by the thirteen fresh and provocative contributions in the special issue. Yet, we ask, if both politically minded artists and culturally minded activists are convinced of the power of art to provoke social change, and if we live a world that by almost all measures is now saturated with politically inclined, aesthetically informed practices, interfaces, objects, and texts, why does art not seem to be making a difference? Clearly, we need to think harder about the relationships between art and action, a task the articles assembled here call upon us to take seriously.
{"title":"The Aesthetics of Creative Activism: Introduction","authors":"Nicholas Holm, Elspeth Tilley","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aesthetics of creative activism, we canvas influential scholarship of political aesthetics to sculpt a broad typology of six interconnected mechanisms by which art might intervene in the world. We label these: Documentation, Disruption, Recognition, Participation, Imagination, and Beauty. Each has a compelling tradition of theory and application, augmented, extended, and sometimes challenged by the thirteen fresh and provocative contributions in the special issue. Yet, we ask, if both politically minded artists and culturally minded activists are convinced of the power of art to provoke social change, and if we live a world that by almost all measures is now saturated with politically inclined, aesthetically informed practices, interfaces, objects, and texts, why does art not seem to be making a difference? Clearly, we need to think harder about the relationships between art and action, a task the articles assembled here call upon us to take seriously.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135787162","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}
Abstract Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience is more accurately conceived of in terms of two kinds of acts: artistic and artworld. In addition to artistic disobedience and artworld disobedience, we add a broader and more diverse sort of transgressive aesthetic disobedience. Our aim is to articulate how Neufeld’s account of a kind of disobedience in the artworld that parallels civil disobedience can prove even more generative.
{"title":"Artistic, Artworld, and Aesthetic Disobedience","authors":"Adam Burgos, Sheila Lintott","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience is more accurately conceived of in terms of two kinds of acts: artistic and artworld. In addition to artistic disobedience and artworld disobedience, we add a broader and more diverse sort of transgressive aesthetic disobedience. Our aim is to articulate how Neufeld’s account of a kind of disobedience in the artworld that parallels civil disobedience can prove even more generative.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135693242","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}
Abstract Activist artists often face a difficult question: is striving to change the world undermined when pursued through difficult and experimental artistic means? Looking closely at Adrian Piper’s Four Intruders Plus Alarm Systems (1980), I consider why this is an important concern for activist art and assess three different responses in relation to Piper’s work. What I call the ‘conciliatory stance’ recommends that when activist artists encounter misunderstanding, they should downplay their experimental artistry in favor of fitting their work to their audience’s appreciative capacities. What I call the ‘steadfast stance’ recommends that activist artists have reason to use their privilege of artistic exceptionalism to challenge their audience’s expectations, even if this leads to misunderstanding. I claim that a middle position, which I call ‘liberal conciliation’, best balances the demands for actual change placed on activism and the experimental means that artists bring to activism.
{"title":"Artistic Exceptionalism and the Risks of Activist Art","authors":"Christopher Earley","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Activist artists often face a difficult question: is striving to change the world undermined when pursued through difficult and experimental artistic means? Looking closely at Adrian Piper’s Four Intruders Plus Alarm Systems (1980), I consider why this is an important concern for activist art and assess three different responses in relation to Piper’s work. What I call the ‘conciliatory stance’ recommends that when activist artists encounter misunderstanding, they should downplay their experimental artistry in favor of fitting their work to their audience’s appreciative capacities. What I call the ‘steadfast stance’ recommends that activist artists have reason to use their privilege of artistic exceptionalism to challenge their audience’s expectations, even if this leads to misunderstanding. I claim that a middle position, which I call ‘liberal conciliation’, best balances the demands for actual change placed on activism and the experimental means that artists bring to activism.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135897636","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}
Strong comic immoralism maintains that every time a humorous demonstration (e.g., a joke) involves a moral defect, it is enhanced aesthetically in virtue of having this moral defect. I want to show that strong comic immoralism is a coherent position that it is possible to defend and that there is, in fact, some reason to defend it. By doing this, my hope is that, moving forward, those who are interested in questions about the relationship between immorality and the aesthetic value of jokes will take more seriously the objections that may be presented against their views by the strong comic immoralist, rather than claiming that “no one on this side of Satan” would be one.
{"title":"Strong Comic Immoralism","authors":"Connor K. Kianpour","doi":"10.1093/jaac/kpad025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Strong comic immoralism maintains that every time a humorous demonstration (e.g., a joke) involves a moral defect, it is enhanced aesthetically in virtue of having this moral defect. I want to show that strong comic immoralism is a coherent position that it is possible to defend and that there is, in fact, some reason to defend it. By doing this, my hope is that, moving forward, those who are interested in questions about the relationship between immorality and the aesthetic value of jokes will take more seriously the objections that may be presented against their views by the strong comic immoralist, rather than claiming that “no one on this side of Satan” would be one.","PeriodicalId":220991,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism","volume":"193 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121000510","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}
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