THE ARTIST AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL?
Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen (Ed.)
Publications of the University of Fine Arts Vienna, Vol. 1
Engl., 168 p., numerous color images, 22 x 16,5 cm, paperback, 2008
ISBN 978-3-85160-117-6
€
18,50 [A]
€ 18,00 [D]
With contributions by Rosalyn Deutsche, Manthia Diawara, Andrea Geyer, Thomas Hirschhorn, Christian Höller, Silvia Kolbowski and Chantal Mouffe and an interview with Sabeth Buchmannw and Barbara Kruger
In reading all the
theoretical contributions to this book, an essentially common idea of
the social can be observed which is of fundamental importance for a new
definition of artistic production: a process-related order of institutionalized
actions, including the linguistic actions to which individuals are exposed.
For here, in the repetition of such institutionalized acts, is where subjects
first emerge at all. Objects, whether they be objects of everyday use
or whole architectures, are like moulds which provide for the institutionalization
of actions. The artist emerges as a social figure, as the product of a
society and the agent of political interests. From this point of view,
the status of objects, the status of the “work” is not the expression
of a circumscribed meaning, but the instrument of forming a subject. The
opposition of theory and practice becomes obsolete. Subject and object
are meaning written into actions.