Bøger af Pascal Gielen

Can art express questions about justice? Could art, perhaps, even create justice? In Aesthetic Justice, sociologist Pascal Gielen and curator Niels Van Tomme invite a variety of artists and critical thinkers--including Zoe Beloff, Arne De Boever, Mark Fisher, Matt Fraser, Tessa Overbeek, Kerry James Marshall, Viktor Misiano, Carlos Motta, Nat Muller, Julie Atlas Muz, Gerald Raunig, Dieter Roelstraete, Hito Steyerl, Julia Svetlichnaja, Hakan Topal, Samuel Vriezen and Christian Wolff--to reflect on new futures for the notion and practice of justice. The book offers thought-provoking views on the ways in which art may confront and potentially redirect social and political futures. Incorporating analyses of contemporary artworks that challenge the social, political or economic status quo, as well as interviews with artists and theoretical reflections, Aesthetic Justice considers the liberating potential of aesthetic frameworks and suggests alternatives for a more just future.

Sidestepping both identity politics and facile multiculturalism, this anthology argues for the embrace of social ambiguity through artMulticulturalism and pluralism presuppose a shared culture with shared values and convictions about, for example, openness, democracy and equality. Multiculturalism therefore in fact presumes a monoculture of views and attitudes. Being able to deal with ambiguities, differences and paradoxes is the outcome of a learning process and thus of cultivation. Art has played a pivotal role in this process since the dawn of modernity; the contemporary artist is a bricoleur, shaman and charlatan who prepares peculiar blends and creates indigestible cocktails, who has to play with cultural conventions if she or he is to be called an "artist" anyway. The Aesthetics of Ambiguity gives stage to art and artists that dare to play with the rules of a broader society and adopt ambiguity and paradoxes, and explores their successes and failures.