Moving Matters of Contemporary Art: Three New Materialist Propositions Cover Image

Moving Matters of Contemporary Art: Three New Materialist Propositions
Moving Matters of Contemporary Art: Three New Materialist Propositions

Author(s): Katve-Kaisa Kontturi
Subject(s): Visual Arts, Aesthetics
Published by: Fakultet za medije i komunikacije - Univerzitet Singidunum
Keywords: contemporary art; new materialism; materiality; process ontology; methodology; concept-making; ethics; politics; Gilles Deleuze; Félix Guattari

Summary/Abstract: Fashioning a new materialist agenda, this essay calls for sensitivity to subtly moving matters present in the processes of making and encountering art. Otherwise, it claims, we will end up with seriously restricted understandings of art’s capabilities. Indeed, we might even miss art’s most inventive and moving offering: how it can change our thinking-feeling. In this essay, I suggest methods of relating to art in more bodily and material terms, and propose concepts that help to point out the materiality of encountering and making art. To make sense of how a new materialist approach might work in the case of contemporary art, I will offer three propositions that revolve around ontology, ethics and politics. These propositions arise from participation with art and are probed and provoked by a close relation to art.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 05
  • Page Range: 42-54
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: English