Talking to Grant H. Kester, Professor of Art History in San Diego and founding editor of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism. On the relation between art and social change. Kester: 'For me the aesthetic is, in a way, the... more
Talking to Grant H. Kester, Professor of Art History in San Diego and founding editor of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism. On the relation between art and social change. Kester: 'For me the aesthetic is, in a way, the missing piece of modern political theory.'
It happens that we have come to think of social art practice in terms of reciprocity. Ever since the rise of this art practice, reciprocity widely has been identified as the main condition for this art practice to work indeed as social... more
It happens that we have come to think of social art practice in terms of reciprocity. Ever since the rise of this art practice, reciprocity widely has been identified as the main condition for this art practice to work indeed as social art practice. Yet, this art practice also produces experiences, which are not necessarily reciprocal by nature: responsibility, generosity, hospitality, friendship, confidence, trust, faith. This is acknowledged, by practitioners and theoreticians alike, but the question how these experiences relate to the condition of reciprocity, in which they would function, still needs to be addressed.
Some curators, amongst them Mary Jane Jacob and Viktor Misiano, testify of a sensibility to experiences which fall outside of reciprocity. In their curatorial practices and writings these curators start to question reciprocity and try to account for asymmetry in encounter.
