Aesthetics Equals Politics: New Discourses Across Art, Architecture, and Philosophy

Description

How aesthetics--understood as a more encompassing framework for human activity--might become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. These essays make the case for a reignited understanding of aesthetics--one that casts aesthetics not as illusory, subjective, or superficial, but as a more encompassing framework for human activity. Such an aesthetics, the contributors suggest, could become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. Departing from the "critical" stance of twentieth-century artists and theorists who embraced a counter-aesthetic framework for political engagement, this book documents how a broader understanding of aesthetics can offer insights into our relationships not only with objects, spaces, environments, and ecologies, but also with each other and the political structures in which we are all enmeshed. The contributors--philosophers, media theorists, artists, curators, writers and architects including such notable figures as Jacques Rancière, Graham Harman, and Elaine Scarry--build a compelling framework for a new aesthetic discourse. The book opens with a conversation in which Rancière tells the volume's editor, Mark Foster Gage, that the aesthetic is "about the experience of a common world." The essays following discuss such topics as the perception of reality; abstraction in ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics as the "first philosophy"; Afrofuturism; Xenofeminism; philosophical realism; the productive force of alienation; and the unbearable lightness of current creative discourse. Contributors Mark Foster Gage, Jacques Rancière, Elaine Scarry, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Ferda Kolatan, Adam Fure, Michael Young, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Roger Rothman, Diann Bauer, Matt Shaw, Albena Yaneva, Brett Mommersteeg, Lydia Kallipoliti, Ariane Lourie Harrison, Rhett Russo, Peggy Deamer, Caroline Picard Matt Shaw, Managing Editor Contents Preface I. The New Foundations of Aesthetic Discourse 1. Introduction 2. Politics Equals Aesthetics: A Conversation between Jacques Rancière and Mark Foster Gage 3. Building and Breath: Beauty and the Pact of Aliveness Building and Breath Notes Bibliography 4. A New Sense of Mimesis The Fracture in Things Mimesis and Formalism Notes Bibliography 5. Use the Force Two Notes Bibliography II. Framing the Aesthetic 6. In Pursuit of the Allusive Object 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Notes Bibliography 7. Aesthetics Postdigital System-Oriented versus Object-Oriented Aesthetics Authors Postdigital Objects Postdigital Notes Bibliography 8. The Aesthetics of Abstraction Ethics, Epistemology, Aesthetics Aesthetics as First Philosophy Abstraction and Allusion “The Redistribution of the Sensible” Critical Awareness and Aesthetic Abstraction Auerbach/Demand/Brethouwer Abstraction Everywhere Notes Bibliography III. Aesthetics and the Politics of Practice 9. Cosmogramic Design: A Cultural Model of the Aesthetic Response Introduction The Black Cultural Cosmos: Perception and Interpretation Cosmogramma: Survival Value, Resonance, and Conceptual Remixing The Kongo Cosmogram: Kalunga and Alternate Realities Conclusion Notes Bibliography 10. Absolutely Small: Sketch of an Anarchist Aesthetic Beyond Critique The Gentle Work of Beauty The Ridiculous Sunny Disposition Notes Bibliography 11. Aesthetics as Alienation Notes Bibliography 12. Reorienting Criticism: Against an A Priori Reductionism Notes Bibliography 13. The Unbearable Lightness of Architectural Aesthetic Discourse Buildings as “Matters of Concern” The Adventures of Contestation How to Reinvent Aesthetic Discourse? Notes Bibliography IV. Aesthetic Alternatives 14. BigDog, or, The Precarious Aesthetics of Tumbling BigDog’s Legacy: Anthropomorphic Cybernetic Machines Psychoanalyzing BigDog: Regression, De-erection, and Part-Objects Notes Bibliography 15. Feral Architecture The Feral Visibility Vastness Intimacy Inhabited Surfaces Darkness Notes Bibliography 16. Architecture, Deep and Cryptic Fissures and Fusions in the Quadruple Object Connotative Objects Depth and Crypticity Notes Bibliography 17. Aesthetic Critique/Aesthetic Activism Accelerationism Object-Oriented Ontology Disobedient Artists Xenofeminism Afrofuturism 2.0 Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today Final Thoughts Notes Bibliography 18. The Strangers among Us A Flicker of Intimacy Interview with a Cat Between the Individual and Its Concept Flashing Teeth Notes Bibliography