This chapter accounts for a distinctive kind of thought, born in and through European dance since... more This chapter accounts for a distinctive kind of thought, born in and through European dance since the mid-1990s, which has thoroughly transformed choreography and performance by reinventing performed relations between the body, movement, and time under the theme of “problems.” The practice of this thought is rooted in the problematization of specific concerns within contemporary theater dance, such as the body-movement bind with respect to expression and form, improvisation and processuality, or spectatorship. Most important, its forte lies in introducing a method of creation by way of problem-posing, which merits philosophical attention. Choreographing problems involves composing ruptures between movement, the body and duration in performance such that they engender a shock upon sensibility, one that inhibits recognition. Thus problems “force” thinking as an exercise of the limits of sensibility that can be accounted for not by representation, but by the principle of expression that Gilles Deleuze develops from Spinoza’s philosophy.
Reaching the halfway point of our discussion, this chapter will examine what might be one of the ... more Reaching the halfway point of our discussion, this chapter will examine what might be one of the most contentious topics in the history of Western philosophy and dance criticism and at once an important question raised by the concept of “choreographing problems”: can dancing be equated with thinking, and if so, under which conditions and terms? The topic of the relationship between dance and thought is further complicated by claims related to improvisation, the mode of generating dance movement in the moment of its execution, with which the so-called thinking body is often identified. Before we try to answer this question on the basis of exposing the problem-method of Weak Dance Strong Questions (WDSQ), a few preliminary remarks about the context of dance improvisation and its theory are needed to better situate the scope of the topic “improvisation” and the problem that WDSQ poses to it.
This chapter focuses on the rupture of the body-movement bind, or the synthesis between the body ... more This chapter focuses on the rupture of the body-movement bind, or the synthesis between the body and movement through the self-expression of the subject of dance or through the physical articulation of movement as the object of dance. In particular, I will explore the forms of corporeality that defy “the predication of embodied subjectivity” (Rothfield 2011: 204), which significantly marks the modernist legacy in contemporary dance. Modern and contemporary dance have served as prime metaphors for a phenomenological understanding of embodied experience and consciousness, emphasizing the subjectivist and personal attributes of movement (see Sheets-Johnstone 1966; Kozel 2008). As Stamatia Portanova remarks, “to retain the body as the basis of knowledge and experience means to pay repeated attention to the I: the lived experience is always his or her experience, and the approach is always in the first person” (Portanova 2013: 4). Although the choreographies we will discuss here don’t replace the body with a nonhuman agent, such as a digital system as in Portanova’s approach, but “retain” the body as the physical prop of movement, I will demonstrate how the relationship between the body and movement is rendered impersonal, desubjectivized, or disobjectivized on the basis of a deliberate disruption of the subjectivist/objectivist bind between them.
This inquiry begins with one characteristic that sets a group of seven works apart within the fie... more This inquiry begins with one characteristic that sets a group of seven works apart within the field of contemporary dance: each work analyzed here poses or formulates a “problem,” and the thorough interpretation of each work requires a distinctive kind of conceptual practice to which that problem gives rise. My claim is based on the study of three varieties of sources: firstly, I draw on the documentation of all seven works’ creation process, on the scores, notes, and essays written by the choreographers during their making of these works. The second source is a series of public interviews with the choreographers that I conducted during a research residency project (Six Months One Location) at the Centre Choregraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon from July to December 2008, as well as additional recorded conversations and written interviews with the makers about all seven works. The public interviews with Xavier Le Roy, Eszter Salamon, and Mette Ingvartsen involved examining Self Unfinished (SU), Untitled (U), Nvsbl, 50/50, and It’s In The Air (IITA) on the basis of published documents, unpublished notes, and frame-by-frame analysis of video recordings of the works while these were projected before an audience. The third kind of insight is provided by my having been witness to the making of Weak Dance Strong Questions (WDSQ), 50/50, and IITA, which I accompanied either as observer (WDSQ) or in the role of dramaturgical assistant (50/50 and IITA).
In the past decade, a growing discourse has developed among choreographers, dance artists, and th... more In the past decade, a growing discourse has developed among choreographers, dance artists, and their collaborators, who are eager to articulate their processes, practices, and working methods through different types of writing and publication. Artists' books, objects, and online platforms-from Thomas Lehmen's Schreibstück (2002) and FUNKTIONEN tool box (2004), to BADco's Whatever Dance Toolbox (2011) in collaboration with Daniel Turing, and the Forsythe Company's project Motionbank (2010-2013)-have contributed to what we may describe today as the "publishing of choreographic ideas," as proposed by Scott deLahunta (2015). Jeroen Peeters, editor of Are We Here Yet? (2010), which focuses on the work of Meg Stuart, emphasizes the discourse intrinsic to dance making, while Mårten Spångberg invites artists to "write their own history," with projects such as The Swedish Dance History (2009-today), 1 to give but one example. Alongside these developments, practice-as-research, which involves dance making and writing, is becoming more established within university settings; and presentations of/on artistic research are now common in conferences, symposia, and other sites of knowledge exchange. We could argue then that the development of an artist's theory of knowledge, which scholars such as Susan Melrose (2007) have been encouraging since the early 2000s, is now well under way both within and without the academy.
Many concepts devised throughout this book, all of which arise from the seven performances under ... more Many concepts devised throughout this book, all of which arise from the seven performances under consideration here, possess a dimension of time by which they are determined. The multiplicity instantiated in the becoming of the performer’s body in Self Unfinished (SU); the modulations of the body-trampoline agencements in It’s In The Air (UTA); the involution of movement coupled with sensation in radical slowness in Nvsbl; the syntax of stutterances in Weak Dance Strong Questions (WDSQ); the transitions from power to crisis-motion in 50/50; the simultaneity of several performances in the head-box in heâtre-elevision (h-e); the wiring of attenders, the bodies of human performers, and phantom-puppets, lights, and voices in Untitled (U)—all these entail various compositions of time. If we were to ask what would be left in these performances if time was evacuated from them, the answer would confirm the indispensible function of time. None of the problems could be divested of the durations which their operation constitutes.
Before our inquiry continues with the theatrical aspects of representation, we need to explicate ... more Before our inquiry continues with the theatrical aspects of representation, we need to explicate the term “theater dance” within the Western-centric (West European and North American) tradition within which the choreographies considered here are made and presented. The attribute of “theater” means more than an institutional distinction from nonartistic dance practices such as social dancing or traditional folkloric dance. Since its modern professionalization in the eighteenth century, dance as an art discipline in the Western tradition has taken place within the theater, whereby most of the aspects of its production and presentation have been regulated by the apparatus of theater. Like other performing arts in the period of the Neo-Avantgarde of the 1960s-’70s, experimental practices in dance, most famously those of the choreographers of the Judson Dance Theater, contested theater under the principle of fusing art and life or temporarily abandoned it for other ideologically or physically more suitable performance sites—galleries, or the street and other sites of everyday life. In the 1990s and 2000s, when Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema, Xavier Le Roy, Boris Charmatz, Eszter Salamon, Jefta van Dinther, and Mette Ingvartsen entered the field of contemporary dance and performance, their work fully resided in the institutional framework of theater, yet it incorporated the historical experience of Neo-Avantgarde performance art, which renounced theater and theatricality in the name of the everyday and art-into-life.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the most prominent choreographers in contemporary dance. Her... more Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the most prominent choreographers in contemporary dance. Her 1982 debut with Fase immediately attracted the attention of the international dance scene; since then De Keersmaeker and her company, Rosas, have created an impressive series of choreographic works that have been described as "pure writing with movement in time and space." In these two volumes and accompanying set of 3 DVDs, De Keersmaeker offers wide-ranging insights into choreography and into the making of her two most recent large-scale works: En Atendant and Cesena. In addition to sketches, notes, and photographs, interviews with De Keersmaeker, as well as dance demonstrations and extensive video clips, are featured. A second volume is a book of photographs by Michel Francois.
Recognized in the 20th- and 21st-century history of political suicides as a radical act of protes... more Recognized in the 20th- and 21st-century history of political suicides as a radical act of protest and a spectacular expression of an intense experience of suffering, self-burning has returned since 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi's act sparked protests in Tunisia. Its last wave in Europe includes those cases of self-incinerations in which the conditions for their political performativity are only partly fulfilled: the acts are public and communicate with the antagonist in the symbolic places of power, but their motivations aren't explicitly formulated as political. When self-annihilation is triggered by the basic needs and rights to maintain life - such as unemployment, housing crises, conflicts at work and other forms of precarity - means and ends with respect to life become indistinguishable. How can life be weaponized as a transindividual form of dissent if self-destruction also brings an end to desperation and suffering of the person? How are we to attend to irreperable acts of self-annihilation, which stand in dire contrast to contemporary practices of self-care, vitalist intensity and self-enhancement?
Resumo: Entendemos a esfera pública como uma esfera discursiva da sociedade, que consiste na fala... more Resumo: Entendemos a esfera pública como uma esfera discursiva da sociedade, que consiste na fala, em ações e movimentos dos cidadãos, nas "palavras e nos atos", como diria Hannah Arendt, que se podem considerar articulações e expressões da ideologia. Para intervir politicamente, a esfera pública precisa de espaço público e, portanto, procura-o. O principal motivo que nos fez começar a investigar a esfera pública é nossa preocupação com a crise que atravessa, uma crise que não está apenas associada a uma privatização da esfera pública, em curso no capitalismo neoliberal, mas também vista, de uma maneira mais ampla, como uma crise de representação na democracia representativa.
Xavier Le Roy has conceived and presented his work as contemporary dance signed by a French chore... more Xavier Le Roy has conceived and presented his work as contemporary dance signed by a French choreographer, as opposed to disseminating it under the banner of French dance per se. As a contemporary French artist, Le Roy is inclined towards the themes and methods of French theory, such as, for instance, its critique of spectacle, exploration of alternative forms of spectatorship, and interest in how the body is represented. But in his attitude towards the material conditions of dance and its modes of production (both in terms of institution and dissemination), he has consciously sought to distance himself from the authorship model of choreography that dominates the French dance scene. More often that not, this positions the choreographer as the director of a given dance company, and also places her/him at the head of a Centre choregraphique national (CNN). Le Roy’s work has remained steadfastly independent and internationally orientated, and his attempt to experiment with alternative ways of working has, by implication, real aesthetic and political significance. This fact is critical because it determines the specific form of Le Roy’s dissent from the majority of French nouvelle danse practitioners like Maguy Marin, Regine Chopinot, Angelin Preljocaj or Mathilde Monnier. In this mode of production, the existence of a stable company and well-funded infrastructure subsidized by the French State has resulted in a distinctive choreographic style and ‘signature’ that is perpetuated from one choreography to another.
This chapter accounts for a distinctive kind of thought, born in and through European dance since... more This chapter accounts for a distinctive kind of thought, born in and through European dance since the mid-1990s, which has thoroughly transformed choreography and performance by reinventing performed relations between the body, movement, and time under the theme of “problems.” The practice of this thought is rooted in the problematization of specific concerns within contemporary theater dance, such as the body-movement bind with respect to expression and form, improvisation and processuality, or spectatorship. Most important, its forte lies in introducing a method of creation by way of problem-posing, which merits philosophical attention. Choreographing problems involves composing ruptures between movement, the body and duration in performance such that they engender a shock upon sensibility, one that inhibits recognition. Thus problems “force” thinking as an exercise of the limits of sensibility that can be accounted for not by representation, but by the principle of expression that Gilles Deleuze develops from Spinoza’s philosophy.
Reaching the halfway point of our discussion, this chapter will examine what might be one of the ... more Reaching the halfway point of our discussion, this chapter will examine what might be one of the most contentious topics in the history of Western philosophy and dance criticism and at once an important question raised by the concept of “choreographing problems”: can dancing be equated with thinking, and if so, under which conditions and terms? The topic of the relationship between dance and thought is further complicated by claims related to improvisation, the mode of generating dance movement in the moment of its execution, with which the so-called thinking body is often identified. Before we try to answer this question on the basis of exposing the problem-method of Weak Dance Strong Questions (WDSQ), a few preliminary remarks about the context of dance improvisation and its theory are needed to better situate the scope of the topic “improvisation” and the problem that WDSQ poses to it.
This chapter focuses on the rupture of the body-movement bind, or the synthesis between the body ... more This chapter focuses on the rupture of the body-movement bind, or the synthesis between the body and movement through the self-expression of the subject of dance or through the physical articulation of movement as the object of dance. In particular, I will explore the forms of corporeality that defy “the predication of embodied subjectivity” (Rothfield 2011: 204), which significantly marks the modernist legacy in contemporary dance. Modern and contemporary dance have served as prime metaphors for a phenomenological understanding of embodied experience and consciousness, emphasizing the subjectivist and personal attributes of movement (see Sheets-Johnstone 1966; Kozel 2008). As Stamatia Portanova remarks, “to retain the body as the basis of knowledge and experience means to pay repeated attention to the I: the lived experience is always his or her experience, and the approach is always in the first person” (Portanova 2013: 4). Although the choreographies we will discuss here don’t replace the body with a nonhuman agent, such as a digital system as in Portanova’s approach, but “retain” the body as the physical prop of movement, I will demonstrate how the relationship between the body and movement is rendered impersonal, desubjectivized, or disobjectivized on the basis of a deliberate disruption of the subjectivist/objectivist bind between them.
This inquiry begins with one characteristic that sets a group of seven works apart within the fie... more This inquiry begins with one characteristic that sets a group of seven works apart within the field of contemporary dance: each work analyzed here poses or formulates a “problem,” and the thorough interpretation of each work requires a distinctive kind of conceptual practice to which that problem gives rise. My claim is based on the study of three varieties of sources: firstly, I draw on the documentation of all seven works’ creation process, on the scores, notes, and essays written by the choreographers during their making of these works. The second source is a series of public interviews with the choreographers that I conducted during a research residency project (Six Months One Location) at the Centre Choregraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon from July to December 2008, as well as additional recorded conversations and written interviews with the makers about all seven works. The public interviews with Xavier Le Roy, Eszter Salamon, and Mette Ingvartsen involved examining Self Unfinished (SU), Untitled (U), Nvsbl, 50/50, and It’s In The Air (IITA) on the basis of published documents, unpublished notes, and frame-by-frame analysis of video recordings of the works while these were projected before an audience. The third kind of insight is provided by my having been witness to the making of Weak Dance Strong Questions (WDSQ), 50/50, and IITA, which I accompanied either as observer (WDSQ) or in the role of dramaturgical assistant (50/50 and IITA).
In the past decade, a growing discourse has developed among choreographers, dance artists, and th... more In the past decade, a growing discourse has developed among choreographers, dance artists, and their collaborators, who are eager to articulate their processes, practices, and working methods through different types of writing and publication. Artists' books, objects, and online platforms-from Thomas Lehmen's Schreibstück (2002) and FUNKTIONEN tool box (2004), to BADco's Whatever Dance Toolbox (2011) in collaboration with Daniel Turing, and the Forsythe Company's project Motionbank (2010-2013)-have contributed to what we may describe today as the "publishing of choreographic ideas," as proposed by Scott deLahunta (2015). Jeroen Peeters, editor of Are We Here Yet? (2010), which focuses on the work of Meg Stuart, emphasizes the discourse intrinsic to dance making, while Mårten Spångberg invites artists to "write their own history," with projects such as The Swedish Dance History (2009-today), 1 to give but one example. Alongside these developments, practice-as-research, which involves dance making and writing, is becoming more established within university settings; and presentations of/on artistic research are now common in conferences, symposia, and other sites of knowledge exchange. We could argue then that the development of an artist's theory of knowledge, which scholars such as Susan Melrose (2007) have been encouraging since the early 2000s, is now well under way both within and without the academy.
Many concepts devised throughout this book, all of which arise from the seven performances under ... more Many concepts devised throughout this book, all of which arise from the seven performances under consideration here, possess a dimension of time by which they are determined. The multiplicity instantiated in the becoming of the performer’s body in Self Unfinished (SU); the modulations of the body-trampoline agencements in It’s In The Air (UTA); the involution of movement coupled with sensation in radical slowness in Nvsbl; the syntax of stutterances in Weak Dance Strong Questions (WDSQ); the transitions from power to crisis-motion in 50/50; the simultaneity of several performances in the head-box in heâtre-elevision (h-e); the wiring of attenders, the bodies of human performers, and phantom-puppets, lights, and voices in Untitled (U)—all these entail various compositions of time. If we were to ask what would be left in these performances if time was evacuated from them, the answer would confirm the indispensible function of time. None of the problems could be divested of the durations which their operation constitutes.
Before our inquiry continues with the theatrical aspects of representation, we need to explicate ... more Before our inquiry continues with the theatrical aspects of representation, we need to explicate the term “theater dance” within the Western-centric (West European and North American) tradition within which the choreographies considered here are made and presented. The attribute of “theater” means more than an institutional distinction from nonartistic dance practices such as social dancing or traditional folkloric dance. Since its modern professionalization in the eighteenth century, dance as an art discipline in the Western tradition has taken place within the theater, whereby most of the aspects of its production and presentation have been regulated by the apparatus of theater. Like other performing arts in the period of the Neo-Avantgarde of the 1960s-’70s, experimental practices in dance, most famously those of the choreographers of the Judson Dance Theater, contested theater under the principle of fusing art and life or temporarily abandoned it for other ideologically or physically more suitable performance sites—galleries, or the street and other sites of everyday life. In the 1990s and 2000s, when Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema, Xavier Le Roy, Boris Charmatz, Eszter Salamon, Jefta van Dinther, and Mette Ingvartsen entered the field of contemporary dance and performance, their work fully resided in the institutional framework of theater, yet it incorporated the historical experience of Neo-Avantgarde performance art, which renounced theater and theatricality in the name of the everyday and art-into-life.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the most prominent choreographers in contemporary dance. Her... more Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the most prominent choreographers in contemporary dance. Her 1982 debut with Fase immediately attracted the attention of the international dance scene; since then De Keersmaeker and her company, Rosas, have created an impressive series of choreographic works that have been described as "pure writing with movement in time and space." In these two volumes and accompanying set of 3 DVDs, De Keersmaeker offers wide-ranging insights into choreography and into the making of her two most recent large-scale works: En Atendant and Cesena. In addition to sketches, notes, and photographs, interviews with De Keersmaeker, as well as dance demonstrations and extensive video clips, are featured. A second volume is a book of photographs by Michel Francois.
Recognized in the 20th- and 21st-century history of political suicides as a radical act of protes... more Recognized in the 20th- and 21st-century history of political suicides as a radical act of protest and a spectacular expression of an intense experience of suffering, self-burning has returned since 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi's act sparked protests in Tunisia. Its last wave in Europe includes those cases of self-incinerations in which the conditions for their political performativity are only partly fulfilled: the acts are public and communicate with the antagonist in the symbolic places of power, but their motivations aren't explicitly formulated as political. When self-annihilation is triggered by the basic needs and rights to maintain life - such as unemployment, housing crises, conflicts at work and other forms of precarity - means and ends with respect to life become indistinguishable. How can life be weaponized as a transindividual form of dissent if self-destruction also brings an end to desperation and suffering of the person? How are we to attend to irreperable acts of self-annihilation, which stand in dire contrast to contemporary practices of self-care, vitalist intensity and self-enhancement?
Resumo: Entendemos a esfera pública como uma esfera discursiva da sociedade, que consiste na fala... more Resumo: Entendemos a esfera pública como uma esfera discursiva da sociedade, que consiste na fala, em ações e movimentos dos cidadãos, nas "palavras e nos atos", como diria Hannah Arendt, que se podem considerar articulações e expressões da ideologia. Para intervir politicamente, a esfera pública precisa de espaço público e, portanto, procura-o. O principal motivo que nos fez começar a investigar a esfera pública é nossa preocupação com a crise que atravessa, uma crise que não está apenas associada a uma privatização da esfera pública, em curso no capitalismo neoliberal, mas também vista, de uma maneira mais ampla, como uma crise de representação na democracia representativa.
Xavier Le Roy has conceived and presented his work as contemporary dance signed by a French chore... more Xavier Le Roy has conceived and presented his work as contemporary dance signed by a French choreographer, as opposed to disseminating it under the banner of French dance per se. As a contemporary French artist, Le Roy is inclined towards the themes and methods of French theory, such as, for instance, its critique of spectacle, exploration of alternative forms of spectatorship, and interest in how the body is represented. But in his attitude towards the material conditions of dance and its modes of production (both in terms of institution and dissemination), he has consciously sought to distance himself from the authorship model of choreography that dominates the French dance scene. More often that not, this positions the choreographer as the director of a given dance company, and also places her/him at the head of a Centre choregraphique national (CNN). Le Roy’s work has remained steadfastly independent and internationally orientated, and his attempt to experiment with alternative ways of working has, by implication, real aesthetic and political significance. This fact is critical because it determines the specific form of Le Roy’s dissent from the majority of French nouvelle danse practitioners like Maguy Marin, Regine Chopinot, Angelin Preljocaj or Mathilde Monnier. In this mode of production, the existence of a stable company and well-funded infrastructure subsidized by the French State has resulted in a distinctive choreographic style and ‘signature’ that is perpetuated from one choreography to another.
Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy, 2022
The book examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self i... more The book examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self in Western neoliberal societies in the 21st century. It approaches the self from a transdisciplinary angle where political and cultural anthropology, performance studies and dramaturgy intersect.
Starting from their concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, Vujanović and Cvejić critically untangle individualist modes of performing the self, such as possessive, aesthetic, and autopoietic individualisms. However, their critique does not make for an argument for collectivism as a socially more viable alternative to individualism. Instead, it confronts them with the more fundamental problem of ontogenesis: how is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? This question marks a turning point in the study, where it steps back into the process of individuation, prior to, and in excess of, the individual.
The process of individuation, however, encompasses biological, social, and technological conditions of becoming whose real potential is transindividual, or more specifically, social transformation. A ‘theater of individuation’ (Gilbert Simondon) captures the dramaturgical stroke by which the authors investigate social relations (like solidarity and de-alienation) in which the self actualizes its transindividual dimension. This epistemic intervention into ontogenesis allows them to expand the horizon of transindividuation in an array of tangible social, aesthetic and political acts and practices. As with every horizon, the transindividual may not be closely at hand; however, it is certainly within reach, and the book encourages the reader to approach it.
Steve Paxton: Drafting Interior Techniques is a collective reader/companion to Steve Paxton's lif... more Steve Paxton: Drafting Interior Techniques is a collective reader/companion to Steve Paxton's life and work edited by Romain Bigé at the occasion of a retrospective exhibition that took place in Lisbon, Portugal. It offers contributions from dancers, philosophers & dance theorists: Delfim Sardo, Romain Bigé, João Fiadeiro, Julie Perrin, Daniel Lepkoff, Bojana Cvejić, Alice Godfroy, Nancy Stark Smith, Hubert Godard, André Lepecki, Yvonne Rainer, Martin Nachbar, Ramsay Burt, Bebe Miller, Patricia Kuypers, Colleen Bartley, as well as a portfolio comprised of photographs by Babette Mangolte, Bill Arnold, Peter Moore, & many others.
TkH Journal for performing arts theory no. 21 , 2013
The publication edited by Bojana Cvejic and Ana Vujanovic deals with the "social choreography" bo... more The publication edited by Bojana Cvejic and Ana Vujanovic deals with the "social choreography" both as a theoretical notion and artistic tool. As a theoretical notion proposed by the literary scholar Andrew Hewitt, it refers to embodiment as the mechanism of ideology, replacing discursive interpellation and claiming that ideology operates as the performance of an embodied ritual, without any belief involved. In parallel, a number of choreographers and artists use the term “social choreography” to describe their practices or political concerns. Moreover, in the past few years we have witnessed how that term has come to stand for a dance equivalent of community, socially engaged, and participatory art.
I would like to begin by observing a peculiar fact. Nowadays, many more concepts of philosophy an... more I would like to begin by observing a peculiar fact. Nowadays, many more concepts of philosophy and critical theory can be found in art than there are artistic ideas or tropes feeding back into the philosopher's Imaginary. The paradox is that the eloquent overuse of notions such as "body-without-organs" (BwO) by artists today overlooks the indebtedness of the artists' favorite philosopher (Gilles Deleuze) to an artist (Antonin Artaud) in this glaring example. My interest isn't to restore the legitimacy of art discourse proper and "pure," a stance that would be hard to defend. Rather, I'm compelled to ask what has happened to the conceptual imagination of the artists today? Does the fact that philosophy and critical theory enjoy the status of intellectual authority in matters of art mean that artists, in spite of their linguistic proficiency and excellence in self-reflectiveness, lack conceptual imagination? The claim remains recklessly general unless we limit and define the sense of our interrogation. That is, we might have to address the problem from a historical-materialistic account of the conjuncture in which contemporary art is produced today. 1
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Papers by Bojana Cvejic
Starting from their concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, Vujanović and Cvejić critically untangle individualist modes of performing the self, such as possessive, aesthetic, and autopoietic individualisms. However, their critique does not make for an argument for collectivism as a socially more viable alternative to individualism. Instead, it confronts them with the more fundamental problem of ontogenesis: how is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? This question marks a turning point in the study, where it steps back into the process of individuation, prior to, and in excess of, the individual.
The process of individuation, however, encompasses biological, social, and technological conditions of becoming whose real potential is transindividual, or more specifically, social transformation. A ‘theater of individuation’ (Gilbert Simondon) captures the dramaturgical stroke by which the authors investigate social relations (like solidarity and de-alienation) in which the self actualizes its transindividual dimension. This epistemic intervention into ontogenesis allows them to expand the horizon of transindividuation in an array of tangible social, aesthetic and political acts and practices. As with every horizon, the transindividual may not be closely at hand; however, it is certainly within reach, and the book encourages the reader to approach it.