RENEWING ART AND AESTHETICS
This is the way we do things – destabilized
'I am interested in the ephemeral and the invisible dimensions of the processes that constitute our daily life… I am not specialized in any particular media. But I am interested to locate my work at the edge between art and what we believe to perceive as so-called "reality". I like to play with modes of perception and with the fact that my art is sometimes not identifiable as such, but sneaks into existing mundane systems or co-exists parallel to them.' -- Dirk Fleischmann, artist statement 2010
Traditionally, art has aspired to shifting our perceptions, to making strange, to making what may seem invisible, visible. And contemporary art is no different. Yet the ways and means that artists now use are so different from previous eras that any artist visiting from another time or dimension – perhaps in their own Tardis – would not recognise the art of today.
From today’s diversity of practices one can perhaps still draw lines around certain art practices and see connections. One such trajectory that we’ve noticed in this current moment of contemporary art are practices that work with everyday ways of doings things and understanding things only to shift them or relocate these ways of working and seeing, sometimes through inhabiting the roles or perhaps through displacing them entirely. These sorts of works shift our perception of both art and reality – making us wonder at the power and possibilities inherent in the everyday.
How has the relation between art practice and everyday life shifted since, for example, art moments like Fluxus or 1990s relational aesthetics? Why are everyday ways of doing things of interest to artists? Does working with everyday ways of doing things shift a sense of what aesthetics is for artists and audiences? How is networked culture affecting the relations between artists and their medium and the expectations for cross media audiences? What’s at stake for these sorts of art practices, politically and culturally? And what’s at stake for audiences of these art practices? What could renewal mean for art and aesthetics? …destabilising, investigating, researching, engaging, revolutionising or…?