Papers by Vlad Morariu
Prezentácie: Dave Beech, Valeria Graziano, Alenka Gregorič, Rado Ištok, Mira Keratová a diskusia ... more Prezentácie: Dave Beech, Valeria Graziano, Alenka Gregorič, Rado Ištok, Mira Keratová a diskusia s umelcami a kurátormi výstavy miesto: Kunsthalle KLUB, Nám. SNP 12, Bratislava sk.tranzit.org Nadácia ERSTE je hlavným partnerom iniciatívy tranzit Grafický dizajn: Sándor Bartha Preklad: Palo Fabuš Jazyková korektúra: Tamara Al-Janabi, Eliška Mazalanová collection collective. template for a future model of representation
'Institutional critique' is a term that refers to a range of diverse artistic practices and disco... more 'Institutional critique' is a term that refers to a range of diverse artistic practices and discourses that emerged at the end of the 1960s and that continue in the present. In spite of their differences, they all share a concern with the institutional conditioning of artists and artworks. Various historicizations of institutional critique (Alberro and Stimson, 2009; Raunig and Ray, 2009; Welchman, 2006) concur that one could distinguish two 'phases': artists of the 1960s and 1970s allegedly investigated the possibilities of an escape towards an 'outside' of the art institution, whereas those of the 1990s analysed the ways in which the artistic subject reproduced the structures of the art institution.
Since the beginning of the 2000s various artists and authors have revisited the histories and legacies of institutional critique. This growing interest was triggered by the perceived intensification of a process that began at the end of the 1960s; it refers to the recuperation and neutralization of artistic types of critique by what Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) have called the 'new spirit' of capitalism. In this context, the Austrian philosopher Gerald Raunig and the members of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies have proposed the hypothesis that 'a new phase' of institutional critique was to emerge. However, this proposition was based less on empirical evidence, than on a 'political and theoretical necessity to be found in the logic of institutional critique' (Raunig, 2009, 3).
This thesis is a response to this set of circumstances. By asking 'what are the conditions and possibilities of institutional critique?' it investigates the categories of institutional critique's logic. My main argument is that a 'phase change' of institutional critique could and should be understood through the apparatus of Derridean deconstruction. This implies a criticism of the idea that one needs to escape the art institution in order to respond to urgencies stemming from the social, economic, and political realms (Truth Is Concrete Platform, 2012). At the same time, I will also refute the idea that institutional critique is trapped in the art institution (Fraser, 2009a). Institutional critique works on the remainder and ‘rest’ that necessarily escapes the instituting will and intention of defining and describing in an exhaustive manner the ‘whatness’ of what (art) is (Boltanski, 2011). I show that between critique and the art institution there is an irreducible relation of symbiosis and cohabitation, and that the deconstructive logic of institutional critique allows it to be both partner and adversary, at the same time, of the art institution.
is, perhaps, British psychiatrist R.D. Laing's most mysterious and unorthodox written work. Where... more is, perhaps, British psychiatrist R.D. Laing's most mysterious and unorthodox written work. Whereas previous texts such as 'The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness' (1960), 'The Self and Others' (1961), and 'The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise ' (1967) proposed an articulated phenomenological and clinical understanding of psychosis and schizophrenia as socially rooted, 'Knots' is an intensely affective descent into the madness of human communication. It has been read as mystical poetry or as a work of art. In the preamble of the book, though, Laing explains that his intention is to delineate a series of familiar patterns, those he had experienced himself: 'knots, tangles, fankles, impasses, disjunctions, whirligogs, binds.' A precise logic designating, to use Guattari's term, a defective abstract machine, unfolds in the five dialogical exchanges between a self and the other or, to name them, Jack and Gill, banal heroes of traditional British nursery rhymes. In other words, logic is slippery and ultimately useless, for it offers no defense against the emerging subterranean demons of the self: figures of authority and the struggle for autonomy, love and hate, admiration and envy, truth, suspicion and conceit. KNOTS, the display articulated at ODD, aims to construct a communicative situation, which is already entangled, disjunctive, double-bound, and in an impasse: in other words, problematic. Let us name the two instances of communication: the geo-cultural-politics of two spacesimproperly called Bucharest (via Paris) and London (via Copenhagen)should talk to each other. They should do so in a research exhibition, inspired by the model of London-based MayDay Rooms, a space archiving material documenting 'social movements, experimental culture and radical expression of marginalised figures and groups', but also a hub for projects linking these with contemporary social and political struggles. A part of the materials hosted by ODD come from MayDayRooms or, by proxy, from a series of groups, institutions and initiatives directly involved in or revisiting the British counterculture of the end of the 1960s and 1970s. Some of them can be consulted on the spot and photo-copied by readers throughout the duration of the project. These will be knotted, bound, already in disjunction, with the local context, taking as a pivotal points issues of Revista ARTA from the same period, and the work of Romanian artist and critic Iulian Mereuță. A recluse figure, largely unknown to the public, Mereuță developed a body of self-exploratory work with an
Morariu, V. (2012). 'The same old friends: to state, to challenge, to resist'. Review of: Art and Philosophy, curator Marcus Steinweg, September 3 – October 30, 2011, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein'. Idea arts+society, Issue 39, Cluj: Idea, 68-79
Books by Vlad Morariu
Cultures of Violence: Visual Arts and Political Violence, 2020
How can art have a transformative social impact? How might its impact be affected by its cultural... more How can art have a transformative social impact? How might its impact be affected by its cultural display? This essay discusses Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘space of appearance’ with relation to Hong Kong Intervention – an artwork by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu in which 100 migrant domestic workers photographed a plastic toy grenade in the homes of their employers. Reflecting on texts by Hanna Pitkin and Ernesto Laclau, it suggests that art, as a space of appearance, can be politically powerful, but it must generate an antagonistic mode of engagement that forwards an open, questioning approach to the political. It argues that this approach opens up politically affective spaces within dominant social structures.
Readers by Vlad Morariu
Translations by Vlad Morariu
Translated by Vlad Morariu as 'Transfigurarea Locului Comun', Idea, 2011, 280 p.
Conference Presentations by Vlad Morariu
Working on Frames: approaching institutional critique from a Derridean perspective Derrida Today ... more Working on Frames: approaching institutional critique from a Derridean perspective Derrida Today Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London, 8-11 June 2016
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Papers by Vlad Morariu
Since the beginning of the 2000s various artists and authors have revisited the histories and legacies of institutional critique. This growing interest was triggered by the perceived intensification of a process that began at the end of the 1960s; it refers to the recuperation and neutralization of artistic types of critique by what Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) have called the 'new spirit' of capitalism. In this context, the Austrian philosopher Gerald Raunig and the members of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies have proposed the hypothesis that 'a new phase' of institutional critique was to emerge. However, this proposition was based less on empirical evidence, than on a 'political and theoretical necessity to be found in the logic of institutional critique' (Raunig, 2009, 3).
This thesis is a response to this set of circumstances. By asking 'what are the conditions and possibilities of institutional critique?' it investigates the categories of institutional critique's logic. My main argument is that a 'phase change' of institutional critique could and should be understood through the apparatus of Derridean deconstruction. This implies a criticism of the idea that one needs to escape the art institution in order to respond to urgencies stemming from the social, economic, and political realms (Truth Is Concrete Platform, 2012). At the same time, I will also refute the idea that institutional critique is trapped in the art institution (Fraser, 2009a). Institutional critique works on the remainder and ‘rest’ that necessarily escapes the instituting will and intention of defining and describing in an exhaustive manner the ‘whatness’ of what (art) is (Boltanski, 2011). I show that between critique and the art institution there is an irreducible relation of symbiosis and cohabitation, and that the deconstructive logic of institutional critique allows it to be both partner and adversary, at the same time, of the art institution.
Books by Vlad Morariu
Readers by Vlad Morariu
Translations by Vlad Morariu
Conference Presentations by Vlad Morariu
Since the beginning of the 2000s various artists and authors have revisited the histories and legacies of institutional critique. This growing interest was triggered by the perceived intensification of a process that began at the end of the 1960s; it refers to the recuperation and neutralization of artistic types of critique by what Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) have called the 'new spirit' of capitalism. In this context, the Austrian philosopher Gerald Raunig and the members of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies have proposed the hypothesis that 'a new phase' of institutional critique was to emerge. However, this proposition was based less on empirical evidence, than on a 'political and theoretical necessity to be found in the logic of institutional critique' (Raunig, 2009, 3).
This thesis is a response to this set of circumstances. By asking 'what are the conditions and possibilities of institutional critique?' it investigates the categories of institutional critique's logic. My main argument is that a 'phase change' of institutional critique could and should be understood through the apparatus of Derridean deconstruction. This implies a criticism of the idea that one needs to escape the art institution in order to respond to urgencies stemming from the social, economic, and political realms (Truth Is Concrete Platform, 2012). At the same time, I will also refute the idea that institutional critique is trapped in the art institution (Fraser, 2009a). Institutional critique works on the remainder and ‘rest’ that necessarily escapes the instituting will and intention of defining and describing in an exhaustive manner the ‘whatness’ of what (art) is (Boltanski, 2011). I show that between critique and the art institution there is an irreducible relation of symbiosis and cohabitation, and that the deconstructive logic of institutional critique allows it to be both partner and adversary, at the same time, of the art institution.