Artistic Work as Symbolic Capital Orel, Barbara
European review (Chichester, England),
08/2020, Letnik:
28, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Female artists and performers are at the top of the scale of precarious work relations in post-Fordist society. Their work is undervalued and seldom paid. This article deals with the issues arising ...from the controversial relations between the cultural, social and economic value of their work. How to re-valorize artistic work performed by women? In providing the answer to this central question, the value of artworks will be defined in terms of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital and in the context of Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism. The article argues that a contemporary alternative can be sought in the new chain of value accumulation, in which the surplus-value of the artwork is created by shifting its symbolic value into a direct relationship to the material resources. This point will be illustrated with the art projects presented at City of Women, an international festival of contemporary arts based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
This article deals with one of the most intriguing art projects at the intersection of art and social experiment—The NSK State in Time. This is a paradigmatic transnational state that does not have a ...territory and whose citizenship can be obtained regardless of one’s nationality, citizenship, race, religion or political convictions. It was established in 1992 by the Slovenian art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst—the NSK, and has seen continuous manifestations in various sociopolitical contexts worldwide. The most prominent one in recent time took place in 2017, when the NSK State opened its own pavilion at the Venice Biennale—a nationally conceptualized fine art event—to exhibit its art next to other countries of the world. This case study analyses the development of The NSK State in Time through the 28 years of its existence, shedding light on the state-formative role of culture and art in the shaping of communities and their identities in the globalized world. The author argues that the NSK State has established a utopian political space that has the power of transcending the ideological limitations of the existing (spatial) states. She demonstrates that this transformative power derives from its liminal position and relentless pursuit of in-betweenness as opposed to the social and political order of the localities where the manifestations of the NSK State take place.
The exploration of the relationship between the fictional and the real in projects by ViaNegativa, a performance group from Slovenia, is based on the presumption that therecognition of what we ...experience as fictional or real is decisively influenced by the perceptualactivity of the spectator. The article argues that the exchange between the elements of fictionand reality takes place in two different concepts of representation: theatricality and absorption.These are two opposing notions used for defining the relationship between the imagerepresented and the spectator. Theatricality is the effect of the address that the image makes tothe spectators and thus makes them conscious of their own act of perceiving. Absorption, inturn, describes the context in which the image is put to view as a closed, self-sufficientsign-system establishing such conditions of perception that make the spectator focuscompletely upon the object represented; the audience is so overcome by the presented imagethat they experience this as if they were absorbed into the staged world. These two concepts areelaborated on the basis of Denis Diderot's essays on theatre and fine art. The essay provesuseful for the argumentation of the thesis since they testify that theatricality and absorption,each in their own way, include the spectator's personal investment into what comes across asfictional or real. A detailed analysis of selected performances by Via Negativa shows that thereal assuch (i.e. theauthenticity of the real that isconfirmed in the identity with its own self)is impossible to achieve. Under the gazeof the spectator, the real is always compelled to revealitself through some kind of representation. As also found by Alain Badiou, the authenticity ofthe real can only be presented through the role of semblance, mask or fiction.
The exploration of the relationship between the fictional and the real in projects by ViaNegativa, a performance group from Slovenia, is based on the presumption that therecognition of what we ...experience as fictional or real is decisively influenced by the perceptualactivity of the spectator. The article argues that the exchange between the elements of fictionand reality takes place in two different concepts of representation: theatricality and absorption.These are two opposing notions used for defining the relationship between the imagerepresented and the spectator. Theatricality is the effect of the address that the image makes tothe spectators and thus makes them conscious of their own act of perceiving. Absorption, inturn, describes the context in which the image is put to view as a closed, self-sufficientsign-system establishing such conditions of perception that make the spectator focuscompletely upon the object represented; the audience is so overcome by the presented imagethat they experience this as if they were absorbed into the staged world. These two concepts areelaborated on the basis of Denis Diderot's essays on theatre and fine art. The essay provesuseful for the argumentation of the thesis since they testify that theatricality and absorption,each in their own way, include the spectator's personal investment into what comes across asfictional or real. A detailed analysis of selected performances by Via Negativa shows that thereal assuch (i.e. theauthenticity of the real that isconfirmed in the identity with its own self)is impossible to achieve. Under the gazeof the spectator, the real is always compelled to revealitself through some kind of representation. As also found by Alain Badiou, the authenticity ofthe real can only be presented through the role of semblance, mask or fiction.
The article deals with the issue of the art of memory creation in the computer age, when the dominant visual paradigm is established by the Internet. It focuses on the analysis of the tear donating ...session
The Cabinet of Memories
(1998) and its reconstruction
The Wailing Wall
(2011), in which the Slovenian director Janez Janša invited the visitors to explore their emotional relationship with their memories. The installation is reflected on in comparison with the Renaissance Memory Theatre by Giuglio Camillo and his visionary anticipation of the Internet, which also inspired Janša's work. While providing the common points and the basic differences between the art of memory in Camillo's and Janša's theatres, the article focuses on the question of the configuration of perception and that of the field of vision, which profoundly determines the ways in which we experience, create and stage memory. The author argues that the structuring of memory in the visual order of the Internet is decisively influenced by two strategies of looking: the gaze that entirely absorbs the spectator into the scene (like Barthes'
punctum
) and the gaze that takes place within the spectator's own field of perception and makes them part of the spectacle (in terms of Sartre's voyeur, surprised by the gaze of the Other). She demonstrates that the construction of memory in the computer age results from a constant negotiation between these two kinds of gaze.
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