Contemporary Art Practice Research Articles

(cu)nhantã tem, (cu)rumim também: políticas de subjetivação em imagens de Abel Azcona

This interdisciplinary essay seeks to understand the universe of meanings in the works Amem (2015) and Make America Great Again (2017), by Spanish artist Abel Azcona from the perspective of performance, of pieces from the real world that seek to break the border between art and life, emphasizing aspects of contemporary artistic practices in movements that do not ignore current political conditions. The analyzed works demonstrate a complex structure between the private and the public of performances and happenings, and highlight Abel Azcona as one of the most provocative artists nowadays.

Co-constructed Documentary Film: collaboration, dialogue, and performance in researching gender and contemporary art in Vietnam

ABSTRACT How can documentary as visual research method create a relay between feminist scholarship and the goals of feminist struggle? The use of co-constructed documentary responds to the three key concerns of feminist research: the situated nature of knowledge; the critique of hierarchical knowledge; and the intention towards emancipatory action. In other words, documentary-making opens out from a “discourse of sobriety” or representation of historical truth to encompass material transformative potential not merely through representational instruments but re-organized methods, relationships, and practices which critique documentary’s social relations of power. The methodological challenge and opportunity involve the re-framing of documentary participant as collaborator with a stake in decision-making and documentary construction. Taken further, this agenda complicates the notion of documentary authorship and related concepts of creative autonomy, individuality and artist “voice.” In this paper, I take up these questions to argue that dialogic authoring in contemporary art theory and practice drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin and Grant Kester) provides the theoretical foundation of an interactional concept of art generated between co-participants.

Encuentro Internacional de Arte de Medellín 2011, MDE11: arte contemporáneo y formación de ciudadanía

O propósito desta revisão crítica é analisar a relação entre o Encontro Internacional de Arte de Medellín (MDE) na sua segunda versão no ano 2011 e a política pública de cultura cidadã, realizada desde esse mesmo ano pela Prefeitura da mesma cidade, para compreender distintos níveis de impacto social, cultural, estético e educativo do evento artístico em favor da formação de uma “cidadania cultural” (MEDELLÌN, 2011) sob o exercício de uma suposta pedagogia social com mediação artística. Dois horizontes de reflexão enquadram a presente proposta, a saber, o conceito e o exercício de práticas artísticas contemporâneas e a ideia de formação cidadã sob a mediação artística e cultural.

ВИРАЖАЛЬНА ЕМОТИВНІСТЬ ТІЛЕСНОСТІ У СУЧАСНОМУ ВІЗУАЛЬНОМУ МИСТЕЦТВІ: МЕТОДОЛОГІЧНИЙ АСПЕКТ

Мета статті – дослідити емотивні параметри зображення тілесності та представити методологічні параметри виражальної емотивності у мистецтвознавчому аналізі тіла, ню, еротики, оголеного тіла. Для реалізації цього завдання досліджується зміст і сенс поняття «емотивність», що впроваджується в сучасний мистецтвознавчий дискурс для комплексного аналізу процесу візуалізації тілесного в образотворчому мистецтві. Методологія дослідження полягає у порівнянні понять «емотивність», «вираження» та «експресія», з’ясуванні їх евристичного потенціалу для аналізу специфіки візуалізації оголеного тіла, еротичної тілесності у візуальному мистецтві. Наукова новизна. В контексті методології емотивності доводиться доцільність «вбудувати» у даний дискурс так зване «українське тіло», тобто ню-зображення у творах українських художників. «Українське тіло» в палітрі сучасного мистецтвознавства та художньої практики виступає емотивною реакцією на світоглядні зміни, що виражаються в конструюванні нових ідеалів, нових героїв, актуальних маркерів цінностей (наприклад, «тіло-свобода», «тіло-війна», «тіло-ґендер»). Зміст даного концепту розкривається через дотичні поняття – «вираження» та «експресія», що стали генеральними у філософсько-естетичних розвідках філософів, теоретиків мистецтва Бенедетто Кроче та Робіна Джорджа Коллінґвуда. Спираючись на розуміння сутності мистецтва як вираження (Кроче), доводиться принцип зображального як емотивно-виражального. Висновки. На прикладі зіставлення класичних та некласичних параметрів зображення тіла в такому ж аспекті з’ясовується зміст понять «зображальне» та «художнє», їх нетотожність. Підкреслюється, що така відмінність яскраво унаочнюється в сучасних мистецьких практиках зображень тілесного (перформансах, медіа-арті, фото-арті тощо), коли зображальна фіксація тіла не є його художнім втіленням. Доводиться значення емотивності у сприйнятті мистецтва як співтворчості, коли сенси віднаходяться поза межами самого твору. Тіло із тіла зображального у мистецтві сьогодення перетворюється на тіло виражальне.

Toward an Understanding of "Ashé" as an Aesthetic Condition

As an artist and cultural investigator specializing in contemporary art theory and practice, my area of research is centered on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions, rediscoveries and reinventions in the African diaspora. As an educator, my pedagogical interest is in constructing new and innovative teaching methods to critically analyze works of art. I was therefore eager to introduce the concept of ashé as an aesthetic criterion to my students and colleagues but needed to test my hypothesis. To that end I created a research project to assess the viabilityof my hypothesis.
 The results of my investigation led to the creation of a series of four weekly workshops that challenge participants to conduct critical analyses of works of art using ashé as a criterion along with the accepted formal elements of art and principles of design. To date, I have conducted these workshops with a diverse population of students from Spelman College, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, Emory University and Colgate University. Spelman College’s African Diaspora and the World program (ADW)1 has embraced my project and a number of faculty members have used it in the classroom with promising results. The primary purpose of this essay is to introduce the project to a broader audience of students, educators, and scholars.

The Case of Hypothetical Art: From Philosophy of Art to Contemporary Art Practice

In previous writings, I have introduced a concept of a hypothetical art, which I have defined as a mental creation of an art philosopher, intended to attract a reader to become fictionally involved in an art issue.1 However, further research has led me to recognise the dual role of hypothetical art, one in the philosophy of art and one in contemporary art practice.2 The intention of the present paper is to delve into this issue.

Brazil’s Deferred 1968

The consignment of industrial wage labor and its central figures to the status of ruins has become something of a cliché in contemporary scholarship and artistic practice. On this view, its demise first became apparent in the 1970s, the precise moment when Brazilian labor movements experienced their first significant gains. This article identifies, describes, and analyzes the emergence of a cinema-labor cycle in São Paulo (1977–82) that constitutes a key instance of Brazil’s “deferred 1968”: a complex response to the distinct pressures of a repressive military regime, entrenched paternalistic union structures, and the auteurist legacy in cinema. In their efforts to apprehend the largest strikes in recent history, filmmakers in the cinema-labor cycle attempted what had seemed elusive in Brazilian cinema up until this point: a mutually constituting alliance between cinema and labor. This article focuses above all on the new understandings of time—including urgency, immediacy, the present tense, and the belated—forged in these films, and the new relationships that emerged among artists and worker-activists as a result. Ultimately, an analysis of this film cycle queries attempts to inscribe both cinema and labor in the past tense.

Breaking Canons: Intersectional Feminism and Anti-Racism in the Work of Black Women Artists

In this essay, I will argue for the relevance of the visual production of several contemporary black women artists for the shattering of Eurocentric stereotypes and racist and patriarchal narratives, which, as legacies of the colonial and enslaving past, continue to wound the social and psychic lives of non-white people. While envisaging contemporary artistic practice as being in close dialogue with, or located within, other epistemic and cultural practices – such as the disciplinary fields of history and art history, and visual culture at large –, which have produced and reproduced racist discourses and racialized subjectivities for centuries, I will examine the ways in which black women artists break Eurocentric canons and counter racism, patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism from within the specific field of contemporary art, in between theory and practice, and drawing on the invaluable lessons of intersectional feminism. Relevant examples will be works by Grada Kilomba (Portugal, 1968), Eurídice Kala aka Zaituna Kala (Mozambique, 1987), and Keyezua (Angola, 1988). This essay will consider the ethico-political valences of such critiques through contemporary art, while not avoiding the problems that are inherent to the ways in which neo-liberal capitalism and white privilege remain structurally at the heart of numerous artistic institutions.

Contemporary Art Practice and Indigenous Knowledge

Abstract Indigenous artists are introducing traditional knowledge practices to the contemporary art world. This article discusses the work of selected Indigenous artists and relays their contribution towards changing art discourses and understandings of Indigenous knowledge. Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau led the way by introducing ancient mythos; the gifted Carl Beam enlarged his oeuvre with ancient building practices; Peter Clair connected traditional Mi'kmaq craft and colonial influence in contemporary basketry; and Edward Poitras brought to life the cultural hero Coyote. More recently, Beau Dick has surprised international art audiences with his masks; Christi Belcourt’s studies of medicinal plants take on new meaning in paintings; Bonnie Devine creates stories around canoes and baskets; Adrian Stimson performs the trickster/ruse myth in the guise of a two-spirited character; and Lisa Myers’s work with the communal sharing of food typifies a younger generation of artists re-engaging with traditional knowledge.

Rewriting Colonial Heritage in Bristol and Marseille: Contemporary Artworks as Decolonial Interventions

ABSTRACT In recent years, the issue of decolonizing heritage has emerged particularly strongly in cities that were historically at the heart of colonial entanglements. In Europe, sites associated with colonialism and slavery have become points of protest for a range of actors, including artists and the descendants of enslaved persons, and stemmed from British and French colonial histories. This article focuses on two cities, Bristol and Marseille, whose landscapes are imbued with residual traumatic memory, exploring how colonial/slave histories are rewritten in contemporary art practices as decolonial practices manifesting more inclusive commemorations of the past. The article analyzes how dynamic memorial activities in these cities entangle heritage and aesthetics with protest and draw attention to the capacity of artists to challenge existing civic narratives. It goes on to explore the methods used by artists – such as walking in the city, performance, and installation – to engage citizens located at the periphery in conversation and elicit their participation in the rewriting of civic histories.

Aesthetic Dividuations in a Globalized Art World

As a professor of philosophy in the art academy of Hamburg, I deal with contemporary art practices; as a theorist of aesthetics I try to determine what kind of aesthetic and artistic developments seem to be significant for our times, and which kind of philosophical theories I can offer in order to better conceptualize and understand the given art productions. At the same time, I attempt to transcend contemporary tendencies and concepts and to foster students’ art practices in a way that makes them meaningful for the future. This lecture seeks to provide a possible interpretation of actual art practices in a globalized world, reflecting also on big art exhibitions such as Documenta 14 and on African films. It sketches a specific aesthetic program called Afropolitanism as an understanding which could be conceived of as paradigmatic for our globalized times. Afropolitanism is a term coined by the South African theorist Achille Mbembe in one of his 2010 book Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisé. Starting from there I want to offer a philosophical concept that goes far beyond the European context and hopes to provide a possible conceptual frame for a more complex understanding of the culturally and artistically entangled and hybridized expressions of our days, including those of human subjectivation. I call this concept dividuation as I have explained further in my book Dividuations: Theories of Participation, which was published in English in 2018. Article received: December 15, 2019; Article accepted: January 31, 2029; Published online: April 15, 2020; Original scholarly paper

RE:PRINT/RE:Present


 
 
 This review refers to the artist book publication re:print published by Marmalade Publishers of Visual Theory in 2018. Edited by Véronique Chance and Duncan Ganley, it was conceived as an extension of the Symposium and Exhibition RE:PRINT/RE:Present convened in July 2015 at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. With contributions, both visual and textual, from twenty artists, the publication does much more than adhere to the original aim of the symposium and exhibition, which sought to examine the impact of technological developments of print within trans-medial art practice. It archives these proposals and ideas, formally documenting the oftentimes hard-to-find critical discourse on print. Often disregarded for an emphasis on technique and reproducibility, here, print assumes greater critical significance, evidenced in the scope of its influence on those featured. Coming from various fields of enquiry, the contributors of re:print demonstrate a diversity of situations and register the activity and theory of print as it is located and explored within contemporary art practice, research and education today.
 
 

People’s Reflections in the City: Exploring the Painting Practices of Figurative Expressionism by Academic Research

This paper is a practical outcome of a multidisciplinary research project conducted by the authors on the contemporary and modern practices of the Improvisation in Arts. All the authors are research-oriented practitioners in the fields of visual arts, performance arts, multimedia, Information and communication technologies as well as vocational training. Furthermore, the drawings, paintings, and sketches are all made by the correspondent author Assistant Professor Dr. Mohammed Baker Mohammed Al-Abbas as part of his research-oriented artistic practice through the hybrid painting techniques. Abstract The present studio-based paper aims to explore the creative reflections of the aesthetics of otherness within the practical phases of the painting production. This paper represents an experimental endeavor to create a two-dimensional artwork, which is a hybrid painting technique on canvas with mixed media and acrylic paints. Within such a specific practice-based context, each phase of this practical approach outlines a critical significance from the first phase of creating that painting to the completing phase. The practical methodology is the tool that converts the researcher's/artist's vision into creative academic production. The process of creating the painting on the canvas is the methodology; such manner turns to be a primary reference for the present exploration. There is a significant paradigm in this approach, which focuses on the artwork as a morphological creature being created by the researcher/artist rather than a consequent result that only exists as a finished/complete/polished outcome. The outcome of this research is the record of the artwork production itself. This record presents visual references of the artwork progress as well as a textual reflective narrative to describe this process with written words. This research-oriented artistic attempt introduces the artists and researchers in the domains of the Fine Arts to integrate the process of art-making into the methodologies of academic research. It is an academic text, reflective text as well as sequential images recording the artwork making. This studio-based experimentation is significant because it examines the aesthetics of the otherness into the expressive figurative abstraction in painting. Furthermore, the impact of such a studio-based approach manifests on advancing applications of the artistic oriented research in the field of Fine Arts globally on curatorial and academic levels. Keywords: Contemporary Art Practice, Studio-Based Methodology, Practice-Based Research, Hybrid Painting Techniques, Multimedia, Mixed media, Photography DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-10-08 Publication date: April 30 th 2020

Self-Reflections in a Personal Space: Investigating the Process of Self-Portrait Painting by Academic Research

The purpose of this practice-based paper is to investigate the artistic reflections and self-aesthetics into the process of artwork making. Every stage of this process represents a particular significance from the initial stage to the finishing stage. Furthermore, this exploration aims to develop the employment of practical research in the field of Visual Arts on personal, communal and institutional levels. In this exploration, the methodology is the vehicle that transforms the research into reality. Making the artwork itself is the methodology, and this process is the primary reference of the present research. Therefore, the author presents the synthesis of the artwork making rather than the analysis of its aftermath, the focus in this context is the construction of the artwork. This is the result of this research, the artwork itself. Regarding the employability aspects of this approach, it involves the practitioners and researchers in the fields of the visual arts toward further realizations of the actual creative process. This employability takes place into the signs of progress on different levels through academic and artistic practices in schools, universities as well as higher learning and teaching institutions. The present practical paper is significant because it investigates reflections of the cultural identity as well as the narratives of personal memory into academic research. In the multicultural present temporality, research-oriented artists highlight the diversity of their societies and represent significantly personal aesthetics as themes in their artworks. This approach would elevate the mutual understanding among people from different aesthetical backgrounds; people's trends enhance multicultural perceptions, harmony, and coexistence. In addition, artists in this regard illustrate such an approach in their visual art when they compose practice and research with the symbolic content, which reflects social motives. Artists practice such art to critique the violent content in communication media and educate people that media may fake reality to create more audience and viewers. This study focused on the significance of subjective representations in contemporary arts, and the impact of such representations on the mutual understanding among people of multicultural societies. Keywords: Contemporary Art Practice, Studio-Based Methodology, Practice-Based Research, Hybrid Painting Techniques, Multimedia, Mixed media, Photography. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-12-18 Publication date: April 30 th 2020

Archival Art: Memory Practices, Interventions, and Productions

AbstractThe widespread preoccupation with memory continues to endure in contemporary art, academic discourses, and social practices such as commemorations, observances, and memorials across the globe. Archives, as spaces of and catalysts for memory, play a central role in society’s modes of remembering, and over the past several decades, artists’ engagements with archives – whether as source, concept, or subject – has turned a spotlight on the workings and transmissions of archival memory. This essay examines some of the critical activators of contemporary art practice with archives to contemplate the mnemonic possibilities of archives and artworks made with them.

What drives bio-art in the twenty-first century? Sources of innovations and cultural implications in bio-art/biodesign and biotechnology

Bio-art epitomizes a coalescence of art and sciences. It is an emerging contemporary artistic practice that uses a wide range of traditional artistic media interwoven with new artistic media that are biological in nature. This includes molecules, genes, cells, tissues, organs, living organisms, ecological niches, landscapes and ecosystems. In addition, bio-art expands into conceptual art using biological processes such as growth, cell division, photosynthesis and concepts of the origin of life and evolution, explaining them as new artistic media. In this time of global challenges, bio-art communicates thoughts and feelings that involve relationships between the artist, science, public and the biological organism or biological concept. This article reviews the major challenges and driving forces that contributed to emerging biology-centered art and design.

REFLECTIONS ON THE CURRENT ECOLOGICAL CRISIS AND REACTIONS THROUGH ART

The varied constituents of Indian society differ enormously among themselves in their access to the resources of the earth. Today, we dwell in the ‘age of ecological arrogance’. Women and Nature have both undergone exploitation. This paper deliberates on the present ecological scenario giving insights from important writers. It further discusses how ecological disturbance instigated into an art practice. Giving examples, it reflects on the practices of some important contemporary ecological artists of India. KEYWORDS: Ecology, Environment, Ecological Art, Eco-Artists

Reclaiming and Preserving Traditional Music: Aesthetics, ethics and technology

Music history is full of examples of composers drawing upon traditional repertoires for their works. Starting from the late nineteenth century in particular, many of them have looked at this specific sound material for several reasons: overcoming the limitations of tonal system, discovering different compositional strategies, finding new inspiration and aesthetics, evoking exoticism. Electronic music is no exception. Since the emergence of sound recording, sonic artists and electronic music composers have experimented with new technologies trying to integrate traditional elements in their works with different results and various purposes. In the present time, the preservation of these traditional elements could represent one of the most crucial goals. In a world characterised by a widespread globalisation, traditional music might be at risk of being neglected or even forgotten, as for local identities and cultures in general. As electronic music composers and sonic artists we should ask ourselves if it is possible to create a link between tradition and innovation, connecting these two apparently opposite realities. Can we safeguard at-risk traditions and at the same time re-present them through contemporary artistic practices and technologies? Is there a way to develop a form of expression that could reach a wide and diverse range of listeners, taking into account recent trends and studies in electronic music while preserving the main distinctive features of the traditional repertoires? The article attempts to answer the above-mentioned questions with the support of a case study: the personal research conducted into the use of traditional music from the southern Italian region of Campania in the scope of electronic music composition.

Reimagining life (forms) with generative and bio art

Artists and designers working in the fields of generative and bio art frequently focus on designing speculative visions of how nature can be reimagined with the use of computational media and synthetic biology. Centered on the unique artistic strategies of reimagining life forms, this paper analyzes and compares a selection of generative software-based projects, in which artists are mimicking different natural phenomena and have the tendency to beautify nature and life, with bio art projects, where ethical considerations are prioritized over other aspects of the work. Experimenting with software and producing code-based generative art can be a relatively accessible creative endeavor while working with synthetic biology requires more demanding and controlled workplace conditions and specialized equipment. Despite the differences in accessibility and usability, both fields of generative and bio art challenge the boundaries of contemporary artistic practice and research by mapping, provoking and contemplating the dramatic changes of life forms, in the era when living matter can be re-engineered into a new material capable of computing.

Afronauts

This article historicises and applies a critical framework to key themes in Afrofuturist cultural production. Building on recent popularisations of tropes of black futurity and Afrocentrism, it analyses the figure of the ‘afronaut’ as it has appeared in a range of contemporary art practices in Europe, the United States, and Africa. The author roots the afronaut in a visual cultural lineage of science fiction and argues that, in recent history, artists deploy this figure to an array of socio-political and epistemological ends.