Download files
Abstract
This thesis explores the relationship between ideas of aesthetics and community in recent art theory and criticism in the context of a resurgence of artistic practices emphasising participation, social engagement and collaboration. These two concepts have been regarded with suspicion in the critical and theoretical trends that came to prominence in the nineteen sixties. Aesthetics was seen as the province of politically disengaged elites with a vested interest in stripping art of any concrete relationship to the social field, while community was often associated with a nostalgic longing for an idealised, conflict-free social order that never existed. However, in recent times the two notions have been subjected to serious reconsideration by a range of influential art theorists, curators and critics. This revival has, at least in part, occurred in response to the resurgence of participatory and socially engaged art since the nineteen nineties.
Responding to these developments, this thesis argues that the aesthetics/community nexus lies at the core of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement and that this foundational text of Western aesthetic philosophy can be reinterpreted to both clarify and refigure the terms of the current debate about socially inclined art. The continuing relevance of Kant’s thought can be evinced by his influence on many, and often radically contrasting, theoretical positions including Clement Greenberg’s formalism, Thierry de Duve’s account of the Duchampian turn, Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern sublime and, more recently, Jacques Rancière’s theory of aesthetics and politics.
This study conducts a comparative analysis of texts by the aforementioned thinkers, as well as selected writings on art and community by Martin Heidegger. The examination of these philosophical reflections is interwoven with a discussion of writings by prominent analysts of the recent social turn in art such as Claire Bishop, Grant Kester, Nicolas Bourriaud, Boris Groys, Nato Thompson, Miwon Kwon, Suzanne Lacy and Claire Doherty. My investigation of these and other relevant texts proposes that recent discourses and curatorial practices focused on the relation between art and community suggest an indirect Heideggerian influence that co-exists with more explicit references to Kant’s third Critique. Ultimately I propose the possibility of a synthesis of the seemingly divergent Kantian and Heideggerian perspectives. Specifically, I contend that Kant’s idea of ‘play’ and Heidegger’s concept of ‘strife’ are based on a similar vision of the aesthetic as openness to the indeterminate. My study concludes that this conception of the aesthetic provides an interpretive paradigm able to address the theoretical as well as ethical challenges posed by new forms of socially engaged art.