Search engine
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Answering the question "What is art for?" is not easy... Here is an answer that you may find interesting. I find it quite complete and simple in the same time (which is not easy regarding to the huge amount of head twisting articles wrote on the subject...).
Art is the best tool we have when it comes to shattering our environments into an infinite number of imaginary tales, forms and space-times. For example, each human societies draft its own masterscript: Most of the time, we blindly play out its scenarios, which proscribe our behaviour, define our work and play and define our institutions and imaginary models: nine-to-five jobs, marriage, mortgage, retirement. The way art acts on these scenarios, or scraps of code, is to reorganise them, by treating them as if they were not givens; art is an alternative editing board, the post-production of the huge film we call "reality".
But before acting in this way, it is necessary to learn how to look and read between the lines; as such, art is also a reading aid. It provides the instruments and optical equipment that allow us to interpret the world. To take a simple example, it could be said that our relationship with reality is that like of a Cabbalist, trying to decipher sacred texts by inventing multiple meanings. I shall not list all of the art functions here; suffice it to say that an artist seems to me to be more useful socially than a financial trader. But what does seem clear is that art occupies a specific position in the city, and that this position is thus political. It incites its subjects to become active; to refuse the passive position the world of entertainment try to foist on them. Entertainment places us in front of images to be looked at; while social formatting provides us with frameworks in which we must live.
If artistic activities consists of putting these instruments and products back into play, then the observer's task is, as in tennis, to knock the ball back into the other court. Nicolas Bourriaud
Translation from the French by Ian Monk
ArtNews Power 100 Issue 16 / November 2007
Art is the best tool we have when it comes to shattering our environments into an infinite number of imaginary tales, forms and space-times. For example, each human societies draft its own masterscript: Most of the time, we blindly play out its scenarios, which proscribe our behaviour, define our work and play and define our institutions and imaginary models: nine-to-five jobs, marriage, mortgage, retirement. The way art acts on these scenarios, or scraps of code, is to reorganise them, by treating them as if they were not givens; art is an alternative editing board, the post-production of the huge film we call "reality".
But before acting in this way, it is necessary to learn how to look and read between the lines; as such, art is also a reading aid. It provides the instruments and optical equipment that allow us to interpret the world. To take a simple example, it could be said that our relationship with reality is that like of a Cabbalist, trying to decipher sacred texts by inventing multiple meanings. I shall not list all of the art functions here; suffice it to say that an artist seems to me to be more useful socially than a financial trader. But what does seem clear is that art occupies a specific position in the city, and that this position is thus political. It incites its subjects to become active; to refuse the passive position the world of entertainment try to foist on them. Entertainment places us in front of images to be looked at; while social formatting provides us with frameworks in which we must live.
If artistic activities consists of putting these instruments and products back into play, then the observer's task is, as in tennis, to knock the ball back into the other court. Nicolas Bourriaud
Translation from the French by Ian Monk
ArtNews Power 100 Issue 16 / November 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment