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Papers by Maja Piotrowska
Abstract: This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factors... more Abstract: This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factors defining the artistic avant-garde movement, understood as a creative formation with identifiable common assumptions that transcend disciplinary divisions and historical classifications. I have decided to assume that a large part of modern art remains faithful to the distinctive avant-garde aspirations. It seems that today, as at the beginning of the 20th century, the present appears to the artists as still difficult to grasp. This phenomenon manifests itself in both the discussion of art’s own borders in the contemporary context, and in its attempts to understand and interpret the changes in the modern life. The intensive focusing of art on the present can be viewed as a lack of reflection, but also as a response to the process of modernisation, i.e. as being unable to separate from it. Some philosophical and anthropological investigations concerning time and the idea of the present (including, above all, the concepts of the “absolute present” of Karl Heinz Bohrer, "modern Constitution" by Bruno Latour and the suspicions concerning the present of the so-called "philosophy of suspicion") will in turn allow for probative diagnoses of the potential causes for anxiety concerning the directions of the contemporary development of art, which can still be observed in its colloquial reception. Keywords: avant-garde, eventness, happening, ‘absolute present’, shock, liquidity, modernism.
Art Inquiry, 2018
The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Natur... more The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Nature with the 2017 views of Nicolas Bourriaud on the role of art and artist in the dynamically changing world of the Anthropocene. Validating in the context of the goal-building a democratic common world-the role of atomized, grass-root, cognitively eclectic political activity, Latour tries to deactivate the fundamental divisions of the Western ontological tradition (including Nature/Culture and society, object/subject, Science/sciences) as paralyzing the individual's ability to truly engage in the life of a community. He also points to the special role of art, which in the modern Western tradition did not have the ambition of concealing the constructional character of the shared visions of reality. These references are contrasted with the more philosophically traditional attitude of Bourriaud, who defends autonomous art as a value and a sphere that in intimate reception offers a possibility of a particularly accurate representation and at the same time a particularly accurate conceptual simulation of a selected segment of current reality. At the same time, Bourriaud demonstrates a more helpless and pessimistic attitude when compared to Latour's concept of participation, remaining in a world largely created by someone / something else.
The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practi... more The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practices and autonomous fields of cultural production by Pierre Bourdieu in order to distinguish the specificity of the autonomous field of art and to grasp the author's attitudes to these theoretical constructions. The autonomous field of art is being drawn in the late thought of the French thinker as one of the still existing structures of historical character enabling cultural production and reproduction that is relatively free from external pressures, favours the accumulation of knowledge and enhances reflection. As such-it is diagnosed as a contemporary value in need of defence. The author of these considerations tries to extract this diagnosis, with which she agrees, form Bourdieu's thought. She also attempts to point out the most important, according to her, humanistic traditions which enabled some selected approaches to the theory of practice of modernity and late modernity, and thus the development of Bourdieu's ideas towards emancipation.
The paper covers the symbolism of death, which seems to be largely overlooked, trivialized or nar... more The paper covers the symbolism of death, which seems to be largely overlooked, trivialized or narrowly read both by the public and by some authors of texts on contemporary aesthetics. Numerous artists of the 20 and 21 century, including those widely known and commented on, try to restore the theme of mortality to the culture of the West, often showing it in the form of intercultural symbols, present in art from the beginning of its documented existence. The aim of this essay is to summon some meanings of such symbols, which are in a comprehensive way traditional, but invariably attractive for contemporary artists and thus freely transformed, and to sketch the possibility of their potential existential impact. The exploration of the possible causes of these meanings has been conducted on the basis of the selected proposals of interpretation in visual anthropology and depth psychology. The symbolism of death and its alleged role in contemporary art and contemporary Western culture hav...
Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts, 2017
Abstract: This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factor... more Abstract:
This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factors defining the artistic avant-garde movement, understood as a creative formation with identifiable common assumptions that transcend disciplinary divisions and historical classifications. I have decided to assume that a large part of modern art remains faithful to the distinctive avant-garde aspirations. It seems that today, as at the beginning of the 20th century, the present appears to the artists as still difficult to grasp. This phenomenon manifests itself in both the discussion of art’s own borders in the contemporary context, and in its attempts to understand and interpret the changes in the modern life. The intensive focusing of art on the present can be viewed as a lack of reflection, but also as a response to the process of modernisation, i.e. as being unable to separate from it. Some philosophical and anthropological investigations concerning time and the idea of the present (including, above all, the concepts of the “absolute present” of Karl Heinz Bohrer, "modern Constitution" by Bruno Latour and the suspicions concerning the present of the so-called "philosophy of suspicion") will in turn allow for probative diagnoses of the potential causes for anxiety concerning the directions of the contemporary development of art, which can still be observed in its colloquial reception.
Keywords: avant-garde, eventness, happening, ‘absolute present’, shock, liquidity, modernism.
Art Inqiuiry
The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practi... more The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practices and autonomous fields of cultural production by Pierre Bourdieu in order to distinguish the specificity of the autonomous field of art and to grasp the author's attitudes to these theoretical constructions. The autonomous field of art is being drawn in the late thought of the French thinker as one of the still existing structures of historical character enabling cultural production and reproduction that is relatively free from external pressures, favours the accumulation of knowledge and enhances reflection. As such-it is diagnosed as a contemporary value in need of defence. The author of these considerations tries to extract this diagnosis, with which she agrees, form Bourdieu's thought. She also attempts to point out the most important, according to her, humanistic traditions which enabled some selected approaches to the theory of practice of modernity and late modernity, and thus the development of Bourdieu's ideas towards emancipation.
Art Inqiuiry
The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Natur... more The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Nature with the 2017 views of Nicolas Bourriaud on the role of art and artist in the dynamically changing world of the Anthropocene. Validating in the context of the goal-building a democratic common world-the role of atomized, grass-root, cognitively eclectic political activity, Latour tries to deactivate the fundamental divisions of the Western ontological tradition (including Nature/Culture and society, object/subject, Science/sciences) as paralyzing the individual's ability to truly engage in the life of a community. He also points to the special role of art, which in the modern Western tradition did not have the ambition of concealing the constructional character of the shared visions of reality. These references are contrasted with the more philosophically traditional attitude of Bourriaud, who defends autonomous art as a value and a sphere that in intimate reception offers a possibility of a particularly accurate representation and at the same time a particularly accurate conceptual simulation of a selected segment of current reality. At the same time, Bourriaud demonstrates a more helpless and pessimistic attitude when compared to Latour's concept of participation, remaining in a world largely created by someone / something else.
Abstract: This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factors... more Abstract: This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factors defining the artistic avant-garde movement, understood as a creative formation with identifiable common assumptions that transcend disciplinary divisions and historical classifications. I have decided to assume that a large part of modern art remains faithful to the distinctive avant-garde aspirations. It seems that today, as at the beginning of the 20th century, the present appears to the artists as still difficult to grasp. This phenomenon manifests itself in both the discussion of art’s own borders in the contemporary context, and in its attempts to understand and interpret the changes in the modern life. The intensive focusing of art on the present can be viewed as a lack of reflection, but also as a response to the process of modernisation, i.e. as being unable to separate from it. Some philosophical and anthropological investigations concerning time and the idea of the present (including, above all, the concepts of the “absolute present” of Karl Heinz Bohrer, "modern Constitution" by Bruno Latour and the suspicions concerning the present of the so-called "philosophy of suspicion") will in turn allow for probative diagnoses of the potential causes for anxiety concerning the directions of the contemporary development of art, which can still be observed in its colloquial reception. Keywords: avant-garde, eventness, happening, ‘absolute present’, shock, liquidity, modernism.
Art Inquiry, 2018
The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Natur... more The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Nature with the 2017 views of Nicolas Bourriaud on the role of art and artist in the dynamically changing world of the Anthropocene. Validating in the context of the goal-building a democratic common world-the role of atomized, grass-root, cognitively eclectic political activity, Latour tries to deactivate the fundamental divisions of the Western ontological tradition (including Nature/Culture and society, object/subject, Science/sciences) as paralyzing the individual's ability to truly engage in the life of a community. He also points to the special role of art, which in the modern Western tradition did not have the ambition of concealing the constructional character of the shared visions of reality. These references are contrasted with the more philosophically traditional attitude of Bourriaud, who defends autonomous art as a value and a sphere that in intimate reception offers a possibility of a particularly accurate representation and at the same time a particularly accurate conceptual simulation of a selected segment of current reality. At the same time, Bourriaud demonstrates a more helpless and pessimistic attitude when compared to Latour's concept of participation, remaining in a world largely created by someone / something else.
The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practi... more The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practices and autonomous fields of cultural production by Pierre Bourdieu in order to distinguish the specificity of the autonomous field of art and to grasp the author's attitudes to these theoretical constructions. The autonomous field of art is being drawn in the late thought of the French thinker as one of the still existing structures of historical character enabling cultural production and reproduction that is relatively free from external pressures, favours the accumulation of knowledge and enhances reflection. As such-it is diagnosed as a contemporary value in need of defence. The author of these considerations tries to extract this diagnosis, with which she agrees, form Bourdieu's thought. She also attempts to point out the most important, according to her, humanistic traditions which enabled some selected approaches to the theory of practice of modernity and late modernity, and thus the development of Bourdieu's ideas towards emancipation.
The paper covers the symbolism of death, which seems to be largely overlooked, trivialized or nar... more The paper covers the symbolism of death, which seems to be largely overlooked, trivialized or narrowly read both by the public and by some authors of texts on contemporary aesthetics. Numerous artists of the 20 and 21 century, including those widely known and commented on, try to restore the theme of mortality to the culture of the West, often showing it in the form of intercultural symbols, present in art from the beginning of its documented existence. The aim of this essay is to summon some meanings of such symbols, which are in a comprehensive way traditional, but invariably attractive for contemporary artists and thus freely transformed, and to sketch the possibility of their potential existential impact. The exploration of the possible causes of these meanings has been conducted on the basis of the selected proposals of interpretation in visual anthropology and depth psychology. The symbolism of death and its alleged role in contemporary art and contemporary Western culture hav...
Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts, 2017
Abstract: This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factor... more Abstract:
This text attempts to reconsider the threads of topicality and happening as the factors defining the artistic avant-garde movement, understood as a creative formation with identifiable common assumptions that transcend disciplinary divisions and historical classifications. I have decided to assume that a large part of modern art remains faithful to the distinctive avant-garde aspirations. It seems that today, as at the beginning of the 20th century, the present appears to the artists as still difficult to grasp. This phenomenon manifests itself in both the discussion of art’s own borders in the contemporary context, and in its attempts to understand and interpret the changes in the modern life. The intensive focusing of art on the present can be viewed as a lack of reflection, but also as a response to the process of modernisation, i.e. as being unable to separate from it. Some philosophical and anthropological investigations concerning time and the idea of the present (including, above all, the concepts of the “absolute present” of Karl Heinz Bohrer, "modern Constitution" by Bruno Latour and the suspicions concerning the present of the so-called "philosophy of suspicion") will in turn allow for probative diagnoses of the potential causes for anxiety concerning the directions of the contemporary development of art, which can still be observed in its colloquial reception.
Keywords: avant-garde, eventness, happening, ‘absolute present’, shock, liquidity, modernism.
Art Inqiuiry
The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practi... more The article's aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practices and autonomous fields of cultural production by Pierre Bourdieu in order to distinguish the specificity of the autonomous field of art and to grasp the author's attitudes to these theoretical constructions. The autonomous field of art is being drawn in the late thought of the French thinker as one of the still existing structures of historical character enabling cultural production and reproduction that is relatively free from external pressures, favours the accumulation of knowledge and enhances reflection. As such-it is diagnosed as a contemporary value in need of defence. The author of these considerations tries to extract this diagnosis, with which she agrees, form Bourdieu's thought. She also attempts to point out the most important, according to her, humanistic traditions which enabled some selected approaches to the theory of practice of modernity and late modernity, and thus the development of Bourdieu's ideas towards emancipation.
Art Inqiuiry
The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Natur... more The text compares the concept of participation suggested by Bruno Latour in his Politics of Nature with the 2017 views of Nicolas Bourriaud on the role of art and artist in the dynamically changing world of the Anthropocene. Validating in the context of the goal-building a democratic common world-the role of atomized, grass-root, cognitively eclectic political activity, Latour tries to deactivate the fundamental divisions of the Western ontological tradition (including Nature/Culture and society, object/subject, Science/sciences) as paralyzing the individual's ability to truly engage in the life of a community. He also points to the special role of art, which in the modern Western tradition did not have the ambition of concealing the constructional character of the shared visions of reality. These references are contrasted with the more philosophically traditional attitude of Bourriaud, who defends autonomous art as a value and a sphere that in intimate reception offers a possibility of a particularly accurate representation and at the same time a particularly accurate conceptual simulation of a selected segment of current reality. At the same time, Bourriaud demonstrates a more helpless and pessimistic attitude when compared to Latour's concept of participation, remaining in a world largely created by someone / something else.