Alain Badiou // Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art

Posted in #6: Revolution or Resistance | 0 comments

1. Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. On the contrary, it is the production of an infinite subjective series, through the finite means of a material subtraction.

2. Art cannot merely be the expression of a particularity (be it ethnic or personal). Art is the impersonal production of a truth that is addressed to everyone.

3. Art is the process of a truth, and this truth is always the truth of the sensible or sensual, the sensible qua sensible. This means†: the transformation of the sensible into an happening of the Idea.

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Anatoly Osmolovsky // Comments on Theodor Adorno’s “Aesthetic Theory”

Posted in #2 Autonomy Zones | 0 comments

Art occupies the space that it inhabits because of its lack of function. In art, everything functional (or social) has been volted into chaos; means and ends, superiors and inferiors, owners and staff have been switched. The liberation from functionality is art’s last political task, a task that is refuted by society, political movements, as well as some segments of art itself. By taking its place – as the result of unspeakable efforts – art makes society aware of its own disorganization. In the sociology of art, this place is known as autonomy. The autonomy of art does not mean that art will always be cut off from society’s current problems. In one way or the other, these problems will become the object of artistic reflection, although the result of this reflection has nothing at all in common with ordinary empirical examinations or therapeutic perscriptions. Instead, these problems are understood as signs for universal issues, whose current content is of no importance to art.

Autonomy’s flipside is gradual neutralization. This neutralization gives rise to those structures of the art system that guarantee its autonomy. Vesting an interest in popularization and educational goals, the art system slowly depletes the art-work of its conflicts and its social bite. For this reason, it becomes possible that, upon visiting a museum, we encounter rooms in which radical abstractionism and orthodox Socialist Realism are “natural” neighbours. This neighborly relationship, impossible even 10 years ago, pays testimony to the process of neutralization. In the swampy quagmire of conflict-free coexistence, everything is equalized: Stalinism becomes equal to Nazism, Marxism to liberalism, abstractionism to realism.

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