Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Resistance is a concept that is originally ethical rather than aesthetic. Its deeper meaning appeals to the force of will that resists another force, external to the subject. Resisting is opposing one’s strength against another’s strength. The history of traditional art and its testimony generally say that art, originally, is not an activity born of willpower. Art would, primarily, relate to the faculties of knowledge. However, this dichotomy is no longer relevant at a time when the stimuli and signs, desires and images, political projects and social narratives, actions and concepts, art and market, are woven together by authoritarian powers that can no longer be easily identified. More than a chance of combinations, this interaction is the ascendancy of the need for vitality and resistance in the artistic spheres. Resistance in art is a light that illuminates the inextricable knot that binds the subject to its existential and historical context. It is a negative moment of a dialectical process of tension. It is in this specific moment of tension that Arts resistance reside. When the monument becomes revolution and the revolution re-becomes monument. The problem of artistic resistance today is the speed at which this tension dissipates. The absorption of the opposition to the normative is so accelerated that this moment of tension is very brief. Thus the possibility of the artist to recognise and distend the tight toils that tie it to the web of institutions becomes increasingly difficult. So, what is the aesthetic of resistance in contemporary times?