Aesthetics and Politics in the age of Ambient Spectacles Nikos Papastergiadis

Aesthetics and Politics in the age of Ambient Spectacles
Nikos Papastergiadis
After reading Guy Debord ‘Comments on the Society of the Spectacle’ it left me depressed and a bit overwhelmed by his critique of contemporary society. Nikos Papastergiadis’s presentation on Jacques Ranciere and Gerald Raunig view on art and politics on the other hand has a more positive message. Papastergiadis talks about war and its image/media portrayal and Lucy & Jorge Orta’s Fallujah-In the Name of God 2007 is a very powerful and potent image in itself. What looks like iron doors or the doors of a machine conjure for me a ‘behind closed door’ feel and yet there they are revealing in part or in whole truths. Papastergiadis suggests the multiple repetition of the image of the twin towers of 9/11 falling has the desired effect to gain a manipulative emotional response from the public and used as a political tool. He also discusses the blurring of boundaries of the witness.
Papastergiadis discusses the relationship of art and politics and makes this point regarding
Jacques Ranciere and Gerald Raunig.
“Raunig Shares Ranciere’s view that the politics of art is not found in the depiction of political struggles. Like Ranciere, Raunig also rejects the modernist claim of aesthetic autonomy and argues that, while art is not subordinate to politics, they are both discrete fields that rest on the same terrain”.
I found Papastergiadis explanation of concatenation and transversality very enlightening. His summation and what he calls ‘cosmopolitan imaginary’ are interesting and give me the feel of collective art forms. However, further to that writes ‘I am not suggesting that political, aesthetic and philosophical modes of thinking will eventually converge along one horizon. I imagine them heading out like discrete elements, one colliding with, or swerving away from the other, generating energy through their motion and interaction, and when they connect they also immediately alter each other’s composition and trajectory’.
Carmel Wellburn