the political 2
Not enough.
Sleep.
There were aspects of the discussion arising out of Cosmin’s presentation yesterday that seem important to note. One was the question of the context and scale of the ‘political’. I am thinking here of the ways in which the ‘micro’ politics of a performance may be viewed in ever increasing contextual waves. For example, a performance that politicises the act of watching could be seen as existing within a canon of works negotiating audience-performer relationships. But, viewed with a wider lens, any work that explicitly (or implicitly?) talks to the act of watching, has the potential to ‘dent’ (or contaminate?) the ways in which a ‘culture’ considers watching.
Actually, I am not sure if this is right. How might my shift in the way I ‘watch’ ever have any political impact? Can art ‘expose’ systems of organisation, and in so doing cause ideological change?
And yet questions of representation seem to me to be profoundly political. Who am I in this performance? What is this action representing, or what does it have the potential to represent? Representational practices inevitably ask questions of the ‘real’, and of the everyday (this pre-empts a discussion of ‘magic’ that happened during Efrosini’s presentation later on the Tuesday).
Rui discussed the ‘politics of taste’ yesterday, and in the ways in which states sanction particular form-contents in art. He talked of “artists as citizens” and I was reminded of discussions I’ve had with people who have talked of the GP (general public) as if it were some kind of mythical beast. But perhaps in reality the GP of art is really artists.
Manuel picked up on Rui’s thoughts, and stated that “aesthetics is about the political”. He asked “Who is making decisions?”
I recognise the messiness of this post. But the discussion on the ‘political’ was unwieldy, and I feel like I am just scratching its surface (badly).
