On Art and Resistance: Book Launch NO Rhetoric(s)
8 March 2024, 4.15 PM - 6.00 PM with Apéro
Lerchenweg 36, Bern, Unitobler F-121
Language: English
Summary
Reflecting on the politicization of art and the aestheticization of politics; which are their overlaps and tensions? To what extent are political or artistic practices really resistant? How does a rhetoric of «no» intersect with a «no» to rhetoric?
Program
Video Presentation
It’s About Time! Reflections on Time and Urgency (2020)
According to Mieke Bal, the title of the film is deliberately ambiguous: it is a «theoretical fiction» based around Bal’s concept of «pre-posterous history», which she developed in her book on Caravaggio and contemporary art. The exclamation mark points to another message: it’s about time we do something about the world!
Keynote Mieke Bal
Art and/as Thought: Image-Thinking for Art’s Political Relevance
Regarding the critique of the concept and practice of “artistic research”, it is necessary to consider how to resist the imposition of research on art-making, as well as the simplification of thought. To make art politically relevant, the resistance to the indifference to the world is crucial: viewers can become witnesses instead of passive contemplators. It is not enough to deploy the imagination, albeit indispensable, but also, to coin a new verb, we must image what we imagine.jects. It is not enough to deploy the imagination, albeit indispensable, but o coin a new verb, we must image what we imagine.
Roundtable and discussion
Thinking Through Contemporary Global Art: A Roundtable
Participants:
- Sara Alonso Gómez (Aix-Marseille University)
- Kendell Geers (South African Artist and Curator based in Brussels)
- Charlotte Matter (University of Zurich)
- Isabel J. Piniella Grillet (IHTP, Paris / CGS, University of Bern)
- Nadia Radwan (University of Bern / University of Neuchâtel)
