Can an understanding be formed of how sensory experience might be presented or manipulated in visual art in order to promote a relational concept of the senses, in opposition to the customary, capitalist notion of sensation as a private possession, as a sensory impression that is mine? I ask the question in the light of recent visual art theory and practice which pursue relational, ecological ambitions. As Arnold Berleant, Nicolas Bourriaud, and Grant Kester see it, ecological ambition and artistic form (...) should correspond, but they fail to recognize sensation as a site where the ecological cause can be fought. Jacques Rancière argues for the political force of the senses, but his distribution of the sensible does not address the particularity of sensory experience. I identify the difference between these approaches within recent relational or ecological aesthetics and my position on sensibility, and indicate some of the problems involved in referring to the senses. I set out the concepts that are central to the cultivation of relational sensibility: style, autofiguration, and the mobility of sensory meaning, extrapolated from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of Paul Cézanne. They amount to positioning the senses ontologically as movements along lines of conceptual-sensory connection and implication, based on the transfer of meanings created artistically through style and autofiguration. (shrink)

Now that the usage and meaning of urban spaces have been dramatically challenged by the global pandemic, several debates and reflections are going on around the manner in which cities – both as concerns the public and the private spaces – have been designed. The article observes how “urban-human face” representations have served different models of urbanity across times and cultures. Using a framework deriving from semiotics of culture, according to which the city represents a model of the world, the (...) article attempts to interpret how portraits of faces have been modelling the city through different urban faciality mechanisms. The focus is on a sample of what we call ‘urban-human faces’, ranging from Soviet propaganda posters to the digital #selfiecity project. The expression refers to series of representations that bring together the city and the face. It can be argued that both the city and the face, produced at a specific historical and cultural moment, with their figurative and plastic elements, deploy the struggle for the city ownership and authorship. Nonetheless, the commensurability of the city and the face can be just based on the fact that both semiotic configurations represent an excess with the help of cartographic reproduction (the city) and the portrait (the face), respectively. A city can be represented by a face to the extent to which it is also multifaceted as a polylogue. On the basis of such instable commensurability, the article will ultimately attempt to bring together the semiotics of the face and the semiotics of the city. (shrink)

Prispevek se pri obravnavi sodobnih participatornih, skupnostno naravnanih umetniških praks na Slovenskem navdihuje v Rancièrovi rehabilitaciji estetike kot nove flozofje aisthesis. Ta nova flozofja čutenja in zaznave se bistveno razlikuje od estetike kot flozofje umetnosti, ki je predvsem estetika umetniškega dela. Rancière raje govori o estetskem režimu umetnosti, ki postavlja v kompleksno in protislovno razmerje avtonomijo umetnosti in preseganje meja med umetnostjo in življenjem. Takšno razmerje je v temelju tako avantgardne umetnosti kot tudi tistih sodobnih umetniških praks, ki so v (...) fokusu naše razprave. Vzponu participatorne umetnosti v devetdesetih letih prejšnjega stoletja v njenih prizadevanjih za družbeno spremembo predhodijo avantgardna gibanja 20. stoletja. Razprava želi prispevati k analizi pojava participatorne umetnosti z estetske in politične perspektive ter pri tem ovrednotiti tudi pomen avantgardne dediščine v luči kontinuitete artikulacije skupnega v umetnosti. (shrink)