Between Battlefield and Play: Art and Aesthetics in Visual Culture

Mona Hatoum\u27s video installation Corps étranger is an example of an artwork that critically comments on particular aspects of contemporary visual culture, such as the colonization of the body\u27s interior by medical image technologies. It has indeed been interpreted in those terms by several authors from within the new academic field of Visual Culture. Here it is argued that the critical cultural impact of the installation might be more fully described when one grants art a relative autonomy within the cultural field and, moreover, draws on concepts from more traditional academic disciplines and approaches, such as aesthetics and phenomenology. Art is a cultural practice that is deeply involved in contemporary life and its hierarchies and differences, but that, nevertheless, can be critical by generating new experiences. I would like to describe this relative autonomy with the help of the concepts of play and of aesthetic reflexivity

Documentando dilemas. Sobre la relevancia de los casos éticamente ambiguos

This paper argues that documentation best serves the conservation of contemporary art when it does not only collect and record information about the work, but also the dilemmas conservators have felt themselves confronted with when deciding their conservation strategy. The reason is that in the last two decades, in and through evolving and reflective practice, a situation has arisen in which new ethical paradigms are emerging, appropriate for different types of work and different logics of perpetuation. The paper outlines three different paradigms with corresponding paradigmatic cases, arguing that only a case-by-case method of ethical deliberation (casuist ethics) will help articulating the appropriate principles and guidelines for the newer paradigms. Documentation of conservation-ethical dilemmas is needed to enable this deliberation. Moreover, most cases will remain rather messy, many artworks consisting of heterogeneous assemblages of objects, ideas and practices that all imply their own logic of perpetuation, other artworks hovering between logics, or passing from one logic to another in the course of their biographies. Therefore the documentation of dilemmas will continue to be required to facilitate a casuist approach to taking responsible decisions and developing a body of professional experience.Este artículo sostiene que la documentación proporciona un mejor servicio a la conservación de arte contemporáneo cuando no solo recopila y registra información sobre las obras, sino que también recoge los dilemas a los que los conservadores han tenido que enfrentarse al tomar decisiones sobre sus estrategias de conservación. La razón es que, en las últimas dos décadas, una práctica cada vez más reflexiva ha favorecido una situación en la que están emergiendo nuevos paradigmas éticos que sirven para diferentes tipos de trabajos artísticos y sus diferentes lógicas de perpetuación. El artículo propone tres paradigmas diferentes con sus correspondientes casos paradigmáticos, argumentando que solo un método de deliberación ética “caso-a-caso” (ética casuística) servirá para articular una serie de principios y directrices adecuados a los más recientes paradigmas. Para posibilitar esta deliberación, se hace necesario documentar los dilemas éticos en la conservación. Además, la mayoría de los casos resultarán bastante conflictivos, dado que muchas obras de arte consisten en la unión heterogénea de objetos, ideas y prácticas, con sus propias lógicas diferenciadas de perpetuación, mientras otras se mueven entre distintas lógicas, o pasan de una lógica a otra en el transcurso de sus biografías. Por tanto, la documentación de los dilemas continuará siendo necesaria para facilitar un acercamiento casuístico a la hora de tomar decisiones con responsabilidad y desarrollar un cuerpo de experiencia profesional

Minimalist Lifestyles and the Path to Degrowth: Towards an Engaged Mindfulness

This chapter combines hermeneutic and empirical methods to discuss contemporary minimalist lifestyles – lifestyles that revolve around the reduction of material belongings, mental distraction, and work-life stress. It examines understandings of social and ecological engagement among the advocates and practitioners of minimalist lifestyles in order to explore if and how minimalist lifestyles might promote a societal transition to degrowth. The chapter reveals that minimalists and degrowthers share concern about socio-environmental exploitation and the ideal of a good life under conditions of material sufficiency but that they diverge on their theories of change. To envision an alignment between minimalist lifestyles and degrowth ambitions, the chapter develops the concept of “engaged mindfulness.