Aesthetics and Politics -Raunig

In aesthetics and politics in the age of ambient spectacles, Nikos Papastergiadis looks not at the question of whether art is caught up with social, political, and economic structures, but taking it as a given that it is, examines the nature and effectiveness of this entanglement. Papastergiadis posits Gerald Raunig as a theorist who sees art and politics as 'discrete fields resting on the same terrain' and examines the concept of 'flow' as it relates to this dynamic. The Deleauzian concept of concatenation, referring to a temporary chain like connection, in this case between art and politics is seen by Raunig as being mutually transformative, while avoiding the creation of a fixed hierarchic relationship between the two. Raunig also applies to notion of transversality to what he calls 'transversal activism'. Here it is the intersection of aesthetics and politics is that is examined, which each field capable of exerting transformative action upon the other but ultimately remaining discrete areas of discourse.