Critical Practice
Social and Artistic Approaches in Scandinavian Art and Extreme Metal
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alicja Sułkowska
Black metal, a genre connecting old-Norse tradition with radical artistic expression and aspiration towards breaking the social and musical taboo in culture, stands in between two seemingly different visual poles. Because of these aesthetic connotations, the main focus of the article is the study of visual analogies between works of Dahl, Kittelsen and the expressionists and their discursive re-work and usage by black metal artists. Following the development of Scandinavian art, especially the national romanticism, as well as expressionism in literature, art and film, the article analyses the types and sources of theoretical correlation between artistic tradition in Scandinavia and modern extreme metal music in these areas. Based on concepts from philosophy, history of art, media and literature studies, the article examines the importance of artistic manifestos of the epochs, juxtaposed with main guidelines of black metal (considered a social and artistic movement), and the matter, in which the genre re-claimed expressionist and romantic art in both visual and discursive (i.e. through ekphrasis) way. The important part of the study is the exploration of references to symbolism, Gothic novel and horror literature, as well as some futuristic postulates (as stated in Marinetti’s manifesto) in both expressionism and black metal. That, in connection with Nietzsche's theories exploited in Munch’s work and extreme metal, realizes the article’s aim to categorize and draw an outline of an interdisciplinary art and music theories within the genre’s stylistic and ideologic development.
Limited Perspectives, Pertinent Gaps and the Outline of Freedom: Composition as a Culturally Conscious and Critical Practice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hannes Dufek
New music, or an experimental approach to music-making is faced with an increasingly difficult field in which to unfold itself today. While it's true that there are more entertainment possibilities and cultural opportunities than ever before, and audiences are growing, sadly, the programme makers usually do not especially look for new and challenging modes of cultural expression. Much rather, there is a tendency, presumably in accordance with nowaday's turn to nationalist and right-wing policies noticeable all over Europe, to exclude such modes and go for established forms and approaches. Even more problematic, though, is the observation that commodification, advertisement communication and the logic of sales now seem to pervade every part of our life, leaving no breathing space, no attention unprodded, no agenda for the subject in full. In this situation, New music is challenged, I argue, with an identity question. If it is to survive as a valid cultural activity, it must at the same time become more accessible and understandable and still retain its sense of critique and heterogeneity. In recent years of my work as a composer, pondering this complex situation, also as part of my PhD, I have found – if tentative, partial and of course subjective – solutions to this problem. Participation and altered roles, accessibility and different formal and material approaches, and a general understanding of music-making as a social process are key concepts to these solutions. In this talk I will give an overview of my reasoning and present these ideas in context.
From Classical Reception to Art-critique: Artworks as Heuristic Mediations for an Ethically-committed Archaeological Evaluation of the Present
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fabio Waki
My paper examines Oscar Wilde’s conception of art-criticism and Michel Foucault’s conception of critique in light of contemporary theories on classical reception, which I associate with my own reading of Foucault’s theories on archaeology and the archive, in order to discuss how a combination of these two conceptions may help us articulate a broader understanding of art criticism: one I will refer to as art-critique, and which addresses the rational, imaginative and aesthesiogenic tensions intrinsic to every artwork as heuristic mediations to produce ethically-committed archaeological evaluations of the present. I therefore intend to discuss a hermeneutical hypothesis that is interested in subjectively approaching artworks as present-tense archives, as heuristic mediations for disclosing and realising orders of the present according to certain ethical commitments, as affective and intellectual grammars, lexicons and thesauri that may help the critic territorialise, deterritorialise and organise the tumultuous order of her present. What I intend, therefore, is to suggest a criticism routine: a routine that appraises the aesthetic potency of an artwork with basis on its formal and material characteristics, but which expands this very potency by studiously evincing or eliciting the possible dialectical connections that such artwork establishes with pressing political matters of the critic’s present—matters that, even if they are not this artwork’s specific objects of analysis, nor contemporaneous with it, still reflect, symptomise and enlighten social malaises current in the critic’s reality.
Marvel's Black Panther: Identity Politics and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tiago Vieira
Throughout 2018, Marvel’s "Black Panther" produced a major hype among scholars, cinema critics and fans. Many have argued that the movie was groundbreaking when compared to the conservative traditions of the mainstream Hollywood cinema by providing a revolutionary utopian vision of a world where black people and women are no longer oppressed. We argue, however, that the three Academy Awards winner leads the viewers to the dead ends of identity politics - where there is no true emancipation from the structural violence of capitalism since its core characteristics are never deeply defied. We consider that “Black Panther” is a fine example of the cultural logic of our times, in which the producers of mainstream culture are able not only to reproduce the system-preferential ideological trends but also - and more importantly - to co-opt most of the existing expressions of resistance with anti-capitalist potential. We conclude by arguing that the only way out from the capitalist mechanisms of oppression is the acknowledgment of the inter-sectional nature of human identity, which demands either the replacement of identity politics by solidarity politics or the forging of new broad, inclusive identities - and that is precisely what "Black Panther" doesn’t promote.
