Touching on Fetish Black Box—A Haptic Performance

Abstract

Touching on the haptic/tactile performance artwork A Haptic Performance, this article unveils the installation Fetish Black Box as the artist’s safe space of possibilities, to explore the field of haptic art. The installation is examined from the perspective of fetish theory as suggested by Hartmut Böhme, which emphasizes the roles of subject and object in recognizing the qualities of desire in order to facilitate coexistence in a future society. Kroneis’ performance-installation challenges the limits of what is possible in socially accepted modes of conduct and puts a more inclusive future way of living together into practice.     

孟荀的“性—情”结构论及艺术本体性

本文从孟子和荀子思想中的“性”与“情”两大范畴入手 ,构建了一个作为生命本体存在形式的“性—情”结构论样式。通过对统领“性—情”结构论的“心”本体的聚合和分解作用 ,梳理了一个心—性—情的逻辑脉络。将“乐”作为形式本体与审美快感体验的主要体现方式进行解剖 ,而使之成为艺术本体存在和审美愉悦的现实参照。本文认为 ,由“心”本体而建构的“性—情”结构论 ,是后世的艺术创造活动中人们提出的所谓“吟咏情性”和“心统性情”等命题的始基 ,它既有张扬艺术情感而创构艺术魅力的作用 ,也有以伦理文化制约艺术一审美体验的局限性。     

Totalitarianism and the problem of Soviet art evaluation: the Lithuanian case

By taking into account dissident/political and art historical interpretations of Soviet art, I analyze how polemics about totalitarianism in the West, which generally corresponded with Cold War debates and Eastern European dissident thought, shaped the post-Soviet evaluations of national artistic legacies. It is argued that the political relationship with the totalitarian past, like in many post-socialist areas where the immediate past was subjected to radical re-evaluation, affected Lithuanian artists’ and critics’ attitude towards local Soviet art. Because of an obvious lack of underground art in Soviet Lithuania, however, the retrospective usage of political categories here became problematic. Especially in international representations, the complexities of artists’ relationship with officialdom came to be routinely assigned to the phenomenon of non-conformism; this eventually obfuscated the differences between the Lithuanian Soviet art context as somewhat different from the Russian case.

The Art of Sculpture: Jan Patočka’s Concept of Incarnate Being

Jan Pato?ka is known as a philosophical analyst of the phenomenological concept of the live-word (Lebenswelt), which contradicts the preoccupations expressed in Sir Herbert Read’s Art of Sculpture. This essay interprets Pato?ka’s “philosophy of sculpture” in the intellectual context of communist Czechoslovakia, arguing that he regarded sculpture as an incarnate being. His phenomenological interpretation defies all attempts to narrow such a being to the realm of mere haptic or visual sensibilities.     

Between art tourism and ‘Protestant pilgrimage’: individual journeys to artworks in two churches of Reformed denomination near Bern,Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Can an individual trip to an artwork in a Protestant church, that evokes experiences of transcendence, be understood as a ‘Protestant pilgrimage’? The question is discussed with a historical example from the eighteenth century and a contemporary example from the twenty-first century, both of which refer to the transcendental dimension of (religious) art and raise the question about the interrelationship between art tourism and pilgrimage. Although the motivation for such journeys is often aesthetic and not spiritual, visitors may be deeply touched by the artworks and experience feelings that transcend the mundane present. If these examples are considered as ‘pilgrimages’ (and not only in a merely metaphorical sense), attention must be paid to their ecumenical, potentially heterodox character. For in the Reformed tradition, the importance of the pilgrimage is the journey itself, and not the final destination.     

The origin and mission of Material Religion

Beginning its sixth year of publication, Material Religion is an interdisciplinary journal that seeks to gather the best work from around the world engaged in materializing the study of religions. The editors welcome original scholarship on any religion and from any period in human history that treats material objects and practices as primary evidence and engages in critical reflection on the cultural construction of materiality. In this article the editors reflect on the formation and format of the journal, the force and direction of its articles and other features, the question of what constitutes the material culture of religion, and finally the role of materiality in the current study of religions. Along the way, the editors consider new theories and concerns that have been taken up in the journal's pages and address the range of disciplines and interests that are represented in the different departments of the journal.     

How the intentions of the draftsman shape perception of a drawing

The interaction between the recovery of the artist’s intentions and the perception of an artwork is a classic topic for philosophy and history of art. It also frequently, albeit sometimes implicitly, comes up in everyday thought and conversation about art and artworks. Since recent work in cognitive science can help us understand how we perceive and understand the intentions of others, this discipline could fruitfully participate in a multidisciplinary investigation of the role of intention recovery in art perception. The method I propose is to look for cases where recovery of the artist’s intentions interacts with perception of a work of art, and this cannot be explain by a simple top-down influence of conscious propositional knowledge on perception. I will focus on drawing and show that recovery of the draftsman’s intentional actions is handled by a psychological process shaped by the motor system of the observer.