Vermittlungskunst als ambivalenter Grenzraum
Nikola Maria Karobath
2010
unpublished
This thesis discusses sociopolitical motivated art practices that are situated at the border to other disciplines and support especially the overlapping of artistic and educative activities. Principles of these practices include the importance of the experiential process instead of emphasizing any final product, the effective participation of the audience, and an extensive social engagement. Two groups of artists are described in order to illustrate these claims. The German team Kunstcoop©
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... to establish an artistic gallery education by accompanying exhibitions with own artistic actions that actively involve spectators. The Art of Change organized similar cooperative projects in Great Britain which encouraged members of marginalized social classes to articulate own statements and to produce self-representations. Possible negative consequences of an educative and community oriented art that result from abusive utilizations of respective activities by the state, the economy and individual persons or institutions must be taken into consideration as they can turn well-meant plans into the opposite and neutralize intended criticism. In order to comment on strategies to cope with occurring problems three works of the American artists Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Adrian Piper and Andrea Fraser are analyzed. All of them show ideological and methodical connections with the previously described projects and are characterized by wise procedures and measures to ward off different sorts of misunderstandings. In the course of this text the discussed practices prove to be that complex that one cannot speak of a homogenous movement nor can judge the corresponding works in a general manner. Instead there must be a repeated exploration of all aspects of every single project to decide whether this certain action tends to contribute to existing power relations and hierarchies or creates a temporary innovative space between rigid disciplines in which varied perspectives are allowed to stand next to each other and to collide productivel [...]
doi:10.25365/thesis.9699
fatcat:5nwp5ep4cfcafigxwk5u524bby