The aim of this paper is to position art within the realm of the everyday for the purposes of establishing the critical/political capabilities of art practice in a post-aesthetic information-based age. In this way, art can be conceived of as a 'technology' which, having been placed in a situation/site, assumes an agency in the engagement of the subject within the dialectic tension of everyday conflict - the background in which the day to day micro-political decisions are made. I use the figure of the walker to examine the potential of a phenomenological approach to the interpretation of a theory of art and everydayness - it is the sensate nature of the walker which is valuable to the perception and interpretation of daily conflicts and dilemmas. The potential of the politically informed walking subject is to 'read' in a discriminating way the fragmented codes of complicity with which the individual/artist relates to or engages with the invisible monumentality of more powerful forces. This paper positions both art and viewer within a space which can no longer be seen as the perspectival unifying limitations of the traditional grid but as a fluid and multidimensional topology of power relations. It is within this context that the social-relational networks are predicted on unavoidable complicities and tacit agreements which are the substance of art and critical action
Date of Award | 1993 |
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Original language | English |
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- information age
- art
- critical action
- power relations
Everyday, walking and artworks
Farman, N. (Author). 1993
Western Sydney University thesis: Master's thesis