Literature and Visual Art in the European Public Sphere
Program description
This research project focuses on the socio-political role of authors and artists in contemporary Europe. It seeks to illuminate the current place of literature and visual art in multi-cultural, liberal societies. We analyze the extent to which texts and art objects play a social role, whether as the expression of a critique of reality or as a positive enunciation of the values, traditions, and ethical outlook of the society. Central to this analysis is the consideration of the different ways in which texts and art objects are experienced, debated, and performed in public contexts by their producers and recipients.
By focusing on contemporary literature and visual art we explore and analyze the expression of, and challenges to, diverse and shared interests as these are reflected in European democratic societies. A wide range of issues relevant to personal and social identity, politics, democracy and the media will be addressed in developing and conveying knowledge, attitudes and practices for European citizens. A special focus is on artists as ‘intellectuals’ who intervene in the public debate. (Collini 2006)
Rationale of the program
Political and ethical issues of power, questions of authority and prestige, and the aesthetic parameters of performance have become increasingly multifarious in contemporary society and its art worlds. Artists play different roles, perform various actions, and express individual opinions in ways that, both intentionally and unintentionally, affect issues that shape and are debated in the public domain. In this research program we analyze the public impact of activities carried out by authors and artists in order to analyze the finely meshed pattern of different forms of artistic performances of responsibility in the public domain. We consider works that seek specifically to engage with social and political issues as well as works that provoke wide-scale public debate in ways that were unintended by their maker.
The notion of ‘public sphere’ refers to the German philosopher J. Habermas, who describes it as a space between civil society and the state, which emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in which critical public discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally guaranteed. The people publicly monitored state authority through informed and critical discourse. In the twentieth century, the public sphere has changed dramatically. The media serve less as platforms of debate than as technologies for managing consensus and promoting consumer culture. Intellectuals participate in networks of opinion, comment and polemic, but are not always accepted as ‘cultural authority’. Rational argument over issues of general concern is disturbed in the context of ‘celebration of individual voices’. (Furedi 2004)
This rather pessimistic view of the public domain however, can be challenged by more optimistic perspectives on the public sphere(s), in which the democratization – inherent to the development and general use – of the internet and the possibilities for individual interaction and new community-thinking are emphasized. Artists and writers do seem to play a vital role here.
Global / English