Art and Politics

The research focuses on the field of Internet art, net.art, which followed the emergence of the World Wide Web and often manifested as a result of the need to find alternative ways to deal with and circulate works of art other than the established mechanisms of the dominant market. It is here that we come across one of the first attempts to criticize corporate aesthetics and the commercialization of information through the paradigm of net.art’s pioneer, the Serbian artist Vuk Cosic. This will be the motive to trace a particular field of artistic-activist practice, that of Tactical Media, which have been closely associated with Internet art. The theoretical foundation on which Tactical Media was based is situated around the theory of French philosopher Michel de Certeau on the practice of everyday life, which is transformed into a political tactic. Through the examples of Heath Bunting, ®TM ark and Yes Men we will encounter practices which combine net.art with Tactical Media and develop as forms of critique towards neo-liberal hegemony. In the last chapter, the space of the Internet is proposed as another real space, according to Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. The following dilemma emerges; whether the heterotopia of the Internet will function as an illusory space which enhances the illusion of real space or whether it will manage to become another real public space, through its political constitution, which can also be a result of its contingent artistic treatment. We will follow the thought of theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Julian Stallabrass, Rosalyn Deutsche and Oliver Marchart, in order to comprehend, through the theory of the political as antagonism and politics as hegemony, that it is not enough for a public space to be physically or institutionally defined as such in order for it to effectively perform its function.

Throughout the domains of social theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis, anxiety moves along the margins of knowledge and existential experience, addressing the notion of nothingness; the "fundamental incompleteness" in Beck, the "nothing" in Kierkegaard, the "lost-object" in Freud, the "objet petit a" in Lacan. The question I pose is why should we read neoliberalism through anxiety? To answer that, I discuss why the neoliberal project, as an ideology and a discourse, is inappropriate for overcoming the production of risk in the context of the “risk society”. Neoliberalism, as based on the idea of the market’s renewal from within the economy, and the individual as self-entrepreneur and self-sufficient, constructs the fantasy that sustains a fascination with an “imaginary other”. I suggest, from a psychoanalytic perspective, that anxiety for the subject can open the way to the Other beyond the enjoyment of the narcissistic identification. I argue that the subject in neoliberalism, in order to work-through the vicious cycle of recurring crises, would have to withdraw from the enjoyment of narcissistic self-destruction and aggressiveness. Anxiety, then, is what points to the neoliberal ideology's own failure, meaning that it constitutes a fantasy that allows for misregarding the most fundamental aspect of the subject of modernity, its fundamental and constitutive Lack.

This is a creative non-fiction essay on the work of an artistic duo named FYTA (mean. plants in greek). The text explores Greek art and secular and church politics as the context for the poetics of FYTA's work. Analytical tools from the areas of psychoanalysis, political philosophy and cultural and social theory are employed in a style of creative writing approach to non-fiction essay.

This essay is concerned with how victims of a conflict can: re-establish their language; form agency to speak about the past, and establish their identity in the process. I will argue that, only after this gain of agency and identity, the process of national reconciliation can begin. I will focus on locally initiated storytelling projects, in the form of oral practices.

France is knowing a current rising identity crisis crystallised around immigration and
Islam. The notions of the French Nation, Republicanism, and French Secularism, namely laicité, emerged through history since the 1870s and kept on being recontextualized over time. Close from the slippage from the Parliamentarian regime to the Presidential system, the normative ‘one and indivisible’ French Republicanism has been reinterpreted into NeoRepublican practices of a community gathered around imaginary Judeo-Christian cultural values in political and media discourses. From this recontextualization has followed a slippage from the normative inclusive laicité to an extremist reinterpretation of the Law as an exclusive laicism targeting Islam and Muslim French citizens. Emerging from a fear of communautarisme enshrined in an international context of tensions and terrorism since the Iranian Revolution, the political discourses tend to be transcribed into the legal norm through the erection of Laws banning the veil in schools, the burqa , and the burqini. These harsh policies, which run counter to the secularist state’s duty of indifference regarding religions as enunciated in the 1905 Law on the Separation between the State and the Church, have nevertheless been reinforced since COVID-19 with the Laws on Separatism and Global Security. Rooted in and recalling colonial and civilising mission ideologies, these practices and their transcriptions into the legal norm are nevertheless hard to denunciate as Islamophobic as long as the French Republic does not recognise any Race leading to and emerging from schizophrenic political discourses against an ‘Islamo Leftism’ political body with secret political ambitions.

A look at Edward Linley Sambourne's life and work as illustrator for Punch Magazine. Archive material from 18 Stafford Terrace and images from Edward Linley Sambourne's own photographic collection have been used for this essay in collaboration with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

This dissertation investigated the ways in which Postcolonial Theory is being taught at Western Universities by looking upon the contents of textbooks commonly used to teach the discipline of International Relations in the „Western‟ world. Postcolonial Theory remains an underestimated approach to international relations that is often left out of the otherwise generally communicated approaches despite the amount of scholarly research that has been and is being undertaken through the lens of this paradigm. Firstly, this dissertation demonstrates that there is a certain incoherence existing within Postcolonial Theory. The dominance of an existent “mainstream Postcolonial Theory” makes the theory less appropriate when being applied to most parts of the world. Large bodies of writings are marginalised, such as the considerable amount of Latin American Postcolonial literature and theory. Ultimately, this dissertation appeals for the presentation of a more diverse and enriched International Relations theory through the inclusion of the more marginalised strains of Postcolonial Theory which remain largely absent from the mainstream literature.

This dissertation will investigate in the ways in which contemporary non-European art is perceived in the ‘Western’-dominated international art world and how this leads to a certain portrayal and behaviour of non-European artists as according to limited definitions and confined boundaries. The effect this has is apparent in the area of artistic production and circulation as well as the reception of artwork. It is looked at ‘exoticism’ and ‘self-exoticism’ that are generated and upheld by outdated and mostly inapplicable disciplinary fields of enquiry, involving the demand for a ‘consumable exotic’, not only apparent in the areas of fine art but similarly within aesthetic products of popular culture, transgressing the often supposed boundaries between. The politics involved in (re)producing ‘Otherness’ within the aesthetic and the insights that Postcolonial Theory has to offer are core concerns of the work. The TV-series Game of Thrones as well as the art of Nadín Ospina and Hassan Musa will be analysed. The artists’ work and experience are taken as examples of combining many different cultural elements and signifies the transgression and challenge of notions of authenticity, originality, ethnicity and identity.

Talking about a “mainstream” of any theory implies a certain universalism with regards to what the theory seeks to make sense of. For theories in social sciences, whose methodologists have built primarily on Positivist thinking over the last centuries, it has proven to be almost impossible to avoid generalisations due to the highly complex nature of different social phenomena that vary to great extents and are highly case-specific. It has to be pointed out that not only, but specifically, in the case of Postcolonial Theory, this discloses certain problems.

Maya Stanfield-Mazzi’s Clothing the New World Church: Liturgical Textiles of Spanish America, 1520-1820 (2021) is the first broad survey that highlights some essential threads in the social and material history of textile production and usage within the context of the Catholic Church in Spanish America. This review highlights the publication’s contribution in interdisciplinary research in the field.

“Radical” art practices have the potential to start a process that leads towards an empathic emancipation. This essay proposes that it is possible to discuss the transformative potential of “radical” art practices by drawing on a series of critical
sources and by looking at three distinct examples: JR, a French artist who travels to socially unstable zones on the planet taking pictures of everyday people and then plastering them illegally in massive format. Secondly “crowdfunding“ a creative online
funding platform that calls on the “crowd” to fund unregulated and/ or subversive art projects. And thirdly the Burning Man Festival, a temporary city erected in the middle of the Nevada desert, serving as a mecca for outsider art and explorations into
alternative social orderings. Through analysing the potential of “radical” art practice I propose that it is a conduit for an empathic emancipation.

The following essay will look at the issue of neologisms and the ‘chains of
Equivalences’ as well as ways of attaining jouissance in James Joyce’s book “Ulysses”.

The vast amount of neologisms, syllogisms, allusions, which are utilized throughout this book raise a rather substantial issue, in that the meaning/comprehensibility of the text is constantly at odds apropos the execution - act of writing. The autonomous potential – literariness – of Ulysses’ language possesses a considerable freedom from referential restraint, while at the same time it makes it epistemologically highly volatile and fragile. Suffice to say that a single signifier is capable of launching intricate phenomenological repercussions, which ought to overcast the sentiment (i.e., considerations of truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, good and bad etc.)  Moreover, the ‘word’ itself becomes merely a vicissitude/interchangeable with other signifiers. In other words, the Signifier word-sic and its grammatical omnipotence – literality - is perpetually trivialized and belittled by the contingency and arbitrariness of the mise-en-scene.

"Oscillatology is possible on the condition, which states that the plurivocity of logo-centric interlocutions is nevertheless oscillating i.e., they are conveying.  Oscillatology is consolidated upon the premise of us denominating ourselves as imago-particles, which oscillate so to irritate the space-time, in which new/old imago-particles will bestir. Oscillatology will operate at its best, when the oscillation itself is a priori in question."

"This text is therefore a pure-Ideology. It is an ideology brought to its uttermost limit. Ideology ought to look and see, dichotomize, differentiate between external and internal, marginalize, create hegemonies and subsequently it ought to die – loose acceleration – and keep it silent, just so to oscillate in ever more cunning form. Ideology calls the writer of this text to bear a name, contain idiosyncrasies as well as array of stigmas."

"Ezra Pound’s ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ summarizes poetry in 1920s London. He speaks about the ‘sublime’ that is to be maintained, the dead art of poetry that is to be resuscitated. In the light of socratic interrogation, the cunning question arises: where is this ‘sublime’? Where are these real experiences kept, which render poet’s reminiscence evermore vivacious. In other words, there surely is such an experience, which validates the undertaking of a poet. Where is this dead art of poetry then - what kind of hogwash-anomaly is this?"

"Throughout the analysis of Ken Ueno’s techniques I have been referring to the real-encounter that I had with the composer. It was not mediated; i.e., two people were talking to each other. The intention of this paper is to show this experience - interview - as a motivation/catalyst for more interviews to be followed - more person-specific music to be performed. "