Practice in Critical Times

Abstract

Inclusive of activist and socially engaged approaches, the term “critical” signifies a broad range of art making. Sometimes object- or display-oriented, sometimes interactive or performative, sometimes consisting of curatorial work, a critical practice may draw from multiple formal and technical traditions, even within the confines of a single work or project. The linking of representational value to a given project's social impact (either opposed or in addition to its visual impact) has led critics and artists to reach for new descriptive terms for these ways of working: relational aesthetics and service art.1 What critical practices share is a fundamental aspiration: to present questions and challenges about the way the world is, the ways we perceive it, and the ways in which we can act in it. These questions or challenges might be presented in general terms or with respect to a particular social detail or situation. This aspiration can be described as inherently critical, because the inescapable implication is that a world with different social arrangements, behaviors, or both is possible. Thus, critical practices are always in a basic sense politicized, irrespective of topical specificity.