Aesthetic Relations

Consumption Markets & Culture, 2006

Presented at the Social Movements, Resistance and Social Change Conference, 2015 as part of a panel discussion on the role of Aesthetics in Politics. As part of an informal discussion, this paper explores the ways in which politics is fundamentally aesthetic, and aesthetics is fundamentally political through the thought of Jacques Rancière. I demonstrate this through an analysis of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the ways in which music has continued to play a significant role in the rupture, the dissensus, the Black Lives Matter movement embodies.

e-flux journal issue 79: “As the world falls apart…” guest-edited by Gean Moreno with David Marriott, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jared Sexton, Sampada Aranke, Lamin Fofana, Patrick King, James Boggs, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and Adam Pendleton www.e-flux.com/journal/79/

2016

Contemporary art, Jacques Rancière argues in Aesthetics and its Discontents (2009 [2004]), is political ‘because of the type of space and time it institutes’. This political function of contemporary art, according to the French philosopher, has undergone two sorts of transformation in the past years. One defined as ‘aesthetics of the sublime’: ‘the passive encounter with the “heterogeneous” sets up a conflict between two different regimes of sensibility’. The other defined as ‘relational aesthetics’: ‘the construction of an undecided and ephemeral situation enjoins a displacement of perception, a passage from the status of spectator to that of actor, a reconfiguration of places’ (pp.23-24). My paper aims to question these categories of aesthetic experience within the particular field of representation of historical trauma (which Rancière places at the core of the ethical turn of contemporary art). It examines the transposition into the post-colonial environment of issues and debates that had been hitherto raised within the Euro-American context and in relation to the Holocaust: How to conceive aesthetic experience in the face of catastrophe? Does bearing witness to extermination require different, new forms of the aesthetic? It is not only our relationship to the tragic legacy of the twentieth century that is at stake but also the way we experience today’s ‘precariousness’ (Hal Foster): post-Cold War, ‘war on terror’, nationalist and ethnic conflicts, economic crisis, migration, resurgence of xenophobic discourses and policies in many European countries. Artists, curators, art critics have been most concerned with those issues over the past years. Projects and exhibitions dealing with traumatic historical events have multiplied worldwide – a phenomenon that can be related, among other factors, to the emergence of new artistic centers on the map, the growth of mobility-facilitating structures (e.g. artist-in-residence, travel grants, biennalization), and a ‘return’ to engaged artistic practices. Such ‘oxymoric popularity of trauma’ (as Susannah Radstone so aptly puts it) in the art world makes it legitimate to wonder whether a ‘trans-national’ aesthetic experience is emerging and what forms it might take on. Through a set of examples, my paper looks at the aesthetic experience artworks engage the spectator with in front of images of atrocity. It examines the influence of technological and societal developments (e.g. electronic and digital media, multiculturalism, human rights, consumerism) on the formation of aesthetic categories and their interaction with previously formulated concepts: anti-aesthetic (Hal Foster et al.), non-aesthetic, and ‘inaesthetic’ (Alain Badiou).

Art and the City: Urban Space, Art, and Social Change conferences bring together a team of international scholars with an interest in art and the right to the city, urban creativity, aesthetics and politics, cultural and artistic rebellion, aesthetics of urban social movements, and rebellious art in the urban space. The central goal of this conference series is to critically engage in a multifaceted, multidisciplinary , and multi-geographic perspective to articulate and promote a richer and more integrated understanding of the ideologies, relationships, meanings, and practices that arise from the diverse interactions among the three social spheres: urban space, art, and society. Art's role in the urban space involves a multitude of spatial and temporal dynamics and constitutes emotional, dialogical, and aesthetic interactions. On the one hand, art assists in the improvement of urban development, tourism, public health, race relations, and even welfare. On the other hand, we observe that art lends its competencies to urban activism and social change from the 'right to the city' and antigentrification movements with their spatial, ideological, and ecological agenda to the struggles of civil rights, individual and collective freedoms. Art has also an essential part in urban social movements, which are also referred to as 'square movements' during the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions (Abaza 2016, Le Vine 2015), the Greek Aganaktismenoi movement (Tsilimpoudini 2016), and the Gezi Uprising (Tunali 2018). It is even argued that the civil war in Syria is triggered by graffiti work in Dara'a (Asher-Shapiro 2016). Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement leaves its mark in the urban space with street murals in over 550 places across the US (Lawrence, Todd et al., 2020). The politico-aesthetic character of these movements has been explored extensively from the point of plural resistance against the authoritative government, the struggle over the appropriation and use of public space, structural and social inequalities, and human rights issues. However, these

American Quarterly, 2022

The relationship between the aesthetic and the political is historically controversial and increasingly complex. In broad terms, politics is associated with a commitment to substantial debate and concrete action, where aesthetics is related to image, style, and performance. Due to this dialectic, political aesthetics has been often equated with a potential for manipulation and mystification. The 20th century was set apart by pessimism toward popular culture and anxiety around the role and use of aesthetics in the political sphere. Though this suspicion towards the aesthetic persists across the humanities and social sciences, the growing interdependence of the popular and the political, alongside recent changes in communication technology, have compelled a number of scholars to consider aesthetics as a fundamental dimension of political activity. Careful attention to key moments of tension and complementarity, especially where political critique is realized through spectacle, encourages productive engagement with the aesthetic dimensions of political communication. Thanks to such engagement, it further becomes clear that the visual plays an especially significant role in mainstream and activist politics alike, insofar as key political activities such as debate, protest, and action commonly take place in and through sensorially rich mediated arenas like television, digital journalism, and social media.

Proceedings book of the International Congress of Aesthetics (ISBN 978-86-7924-224-2), 2019

This article is a result of my participation at the International Congress of Aesthetics (2019). The conference presentation and full text were published in the proceedings book (ISBN 978-86-7924-224-2). After a selection was made, the editorial board of Art and Media, AM Journal of Art and Media Studies (ISSN 2217-9666 – printed, ISSN 2406-1654 – online) also decided to publish this article. Abstract: This article analyzes selected classic artworks, which exert influence over contemporary images. The basis of this research proposal is the analysis of the transformation of long-established and internationally recognized artworks through digital technology and social media. The investigation will also highlight the symbolic meaning of absolute values of the human being, such as the primary emotions regarding different forms of representation and reproduction of images broadcast by media, concerning the political impact of global visual culture. The first concern is that visual culture consists of an “image” of reality in constant reconfiguration. Thus, visual arts have been presented consensually based on democratic ideals and freedom of expression. Nonetheless, forms of transgression have been transformed. Among the most significant factors are the lack of criteria and the dissolution of values to explain why visual culture, in its purpose, is often not understood or assimilated. In some cases, real tragedies are confused with artistic performances. In fact, the general tendency is for fiction to imitate reality even more closely. Therefore, the second concern is the context of visual arts in current media, i.e., the meaning of the images, when manipulated and instrumentalized according to political-ideological interests, concerning society (especially regarding the power of capital and consumption), and their global and cultural impact through social networks. The objective of this study is to discern facts from fiction to better understand and interpret emerging society towards democracy. The relationship between ethics and aesthetic values is not only in art’s formal elements but also as content in human achievements. The images are analyzed through art history, iconology, and iconography, to investigate, select, and evaluate the visual object as a form of communication in the current social impact of political images. Finally, the objective is to show the real-digital interface as a means of interpretation and aesthetic experience as part of this perception process, also considering the artifice of the images in configuration. Hence, absolute reference values of human existence in visual arts are questioned, eliminating any illusion, given the sense of novelty, in the face of mercantile injunctions and technical progress concerning the impact it exerts on social networks. Cites as: Wagner, Christiane. 2019. “Artworks and the Paradoxes of the Media-Transmitted Reality.” In Proceedings book of International Congress of Aesthetics, Art and Media, AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (October): 71– 85. DOI: http://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.324

Urban Geography

This article analyzes the spontaneous production of graffiti art and murals covering the entrances of businesses in the central business district of Oakland, CA, in the wake of the global protest movements, in 2020, against state violence and systemic racism. I argue that the art made legible what gets hidden through the violent processes of gentrification, neoliberal urbanism, and displacement/dispossession. The paper rethinks what borders, policing, and reclamation mean in a time of economic instability and a global health crisis, through the placement of these vernacular expressions in Downtown Oakland. What is revealed through the art is the convergence of two co-constitutive publics-a segregated, decaying city mostly inhabited by poor and working-class Black and Latinx residents and laborers, and a modern, prosperous, neoliberal city that caters to a privileged class of white residents and tourists-especially as the city grappled with the management and regulation of public space in the midst of a global pandemic. The article thus theorizes public space as layered and always contested, and not simply a space of conflict but also collective engagement.