The Artist as Public Intellectual?
Edited by
Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen
2008
ISBN 978-3-85160-117-6
Out of print

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.

Texts by
Rosalyn Deutsche,
Manthia Diawara,
Thomas Hirschhorn,
Christian Höller,
Silvia Kolbowski,
Andrea Geyer,
Chantal Mouffe
and with a conversation between
Sabeth Buchmann
and
Barbara Kruger
English
168 pages, 
16.5
22
numerous illustrations in color
softcover
series/volume
Publications of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Vol.1