Sustaining Ourselves
Leading by Example: From Community Art to Militant Art Activism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Martin Lang
This paper challenges conventional views of socially engaged art and community-based practices, advocating for art's autonomy while fostering radical change. The research objectives are to critically examine the contemporary demand for art's integration into society and offer an alternative perspective that avoids institutionalisation. The practical relevance lies in redefining the role of the arts in shaping society and promoting meaningful change, bridging the gap between autonomy and political commitment. Drawing from both analytic philosophy of art (specifically, “ethical criticism of art”) and the “political criticism of art” taken from Sartre and Adorno, this paper contributes to the academic field by introducing the concept of “dialectical ethicism”: a unique aesthetic framework for harmonising aesthetic autonomy and political commitment. Qualitative research methods, including interviews with art collectives, inform this study's approach. It critically examines the contemporary context (evident in the Turner Prize 2021, British Art Show 2021 and Documenta 15, 2022) that informs a rejection of artistic expertise in favour of egalitarian processes to uncover a dialectical tension: one that necessitates the careful reinstatement of artistic authorship while maintaining sincere political ambitions and signification. These conclusions underline the potential for art to drive meaningful political change without compromising its aesthetic autonomy. This work not only redefines the relationship between the arts and society but also offers a foundation for future research in this domain.
Art is Sustenance: The Role of Art in Health
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Siu Challons-Lipton
The WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. It roots health firmly within society and culture. Art sustains our minds, bodies, and souls. It helps us connect with our pain as much as our joy. The arts are vital to both our physical and mental health and impact health and well-being at all stages of life. The arts can benefit medicine and healthcare, both for patients and healthcare professionals through healing and stress reduction, pain management, cognitive rehabilitation, expression and communication, education and training, community building and social support, and enhancing the healthcare environment. Incorporating the arts into medical care requires collaboration between healthcare professionals, artists, and therapists. As the evidence supporting the benefits of the arts in healthcare is continually growing, the use of the arts as a complementary approach to conventional medical treatments is gaining recognition and acceptance globally in healthcare settings.
Featured Unfolding a Future of Time - Rethinking Art for Sustainability : Portraying Time as the Being of the Sensible in a Deleuzian Perspective
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Haeyoung Youn
This paper examines how art can promote sustainable practices for climate change. Haeyoen Hwang's artworks feature melting glaciers, which are significant contributors to climate change. Going beyond mere abstraction, these works capture the intensity of melting glaciers, reflecting Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the figural. Hwang brings a temporal perspective to the paintings, weaving past, present, and future into a singular narrative. This approach, inspired by Deleuze's time theory, suggests that the present coexists with and is divided by past and future. The work, Born as a Glacier and Fell Asleep as a Star, uses a star to signify glaciers’ history as pure past. Evening Primrose shows glaciers nourishing flowers that thrive at night, depicted in hues that blend with the background, hinting at a future filled with potential. The artworks encourage a remembrance of the future, challenging the typical association of memory with the past. The series includes Don’t Cry, Don’t Melt, Become a Glacier and The Glacier’s Determination, urging a recollection of a future where glaciers form anew. Nietzsche’s idea that memories, fueled by willpower, shape our future actions, underpins this series. The paintings do not just recall past decisions but emphasize the imperative to act on future commitments. Hwang's art echoes Deleuze's idea of “becoming a people to come,” a notion of communal potentiality. The hope is these paintings motivate a proactive stance on climate issues. In essence, by representing a sensible temporality, Hwang’s art envisions sustainability as an active force in shaping what is yet to come.
Railway Station Architecture: Artistic Poses
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Liviu Gabriel Baicu
The concept of "station" has two meanings in common parlance: either just the building where passengers stop, or the complex consisting of several buildings with strictly functional functions - passenger station, goods station, control tower, water tank, open and closed platforms, toilets - or commercial - station hotel, station café, various shops, other facilities. In some cases, the concept also includes urban aspects - the street, the market or the station area. This 'variety' of the scope of the concept is mainly explained by the fact that the railway station is usually an urban centre of interest, creating economic and commercial activity around it that meets the requirements generated by rail transport, which at city level means 'boosting urbanity'. As a rule, the names used for rail activity were naturally adopted from the water transport sphere, moving from 'land port', 'embarkation point' or 'disembarkation point', 'platform', to the expression 'station', which originally meant the possibility of parking ships." Whatever the architectural style, whatever the size of the building, railway station architecture is evoked in all the arts, and it in turn facilitates the evolution of the arts further on in history. Thus, as this paper explores, it is only through the artistic expression of these buildings that we can override concepts such as space and time and transcend into moments captured with great skill by architects, painters, directors, actors, dancers, screenwriters, playwrights, writers, sculptors, and musicians.
