Art Becomes You - Book Release

Pastiche and the Politics of Art: Materiality in a Post Material Paradigm.
Editors: Henry Rogers & Aaron Williamson

art becomes you - coverThis exciting new publication investigates the role of art and the artist in the 21st century and the political and ethical possibilities that relationship may hold. Arguably much current ‘practice’ is in a position where the creation of an object, an artwork, is either no longer enough or appropriate as a response to the perceived conditions of what may constitute art. In this publication, which has been developed from the ABY conference held at BIAD in 2004, we have invited writers of international repute: Amelia Jones, Judith Halberstam, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Jim Mooney, Pen Dalton, Stephen Whittle, Laurence Harvey and Aaron Williamson to address the issue that the work of art may well be considered more as a ‘relation’ than a ‘substance’, as that which may operate ‘differently’ within the social space. In relationship to this we invited writers to explore ideas of parody and pastiche in relationship to politics and the potential work of art. Sarat Maharaj chaired the event and makes a significant contribution to the discussion within the publication.

The various contributions explore how and in what ways the material status of art is transformed through a consideration of, on the one hand, the artist’s own subjective identifications, and on the other, by performative and process-based approaches to making art. It aims to further the contemporary claims of performative, postmaterial forms of art such as performance, video art, time-based, digital art and installation through contextualising these developments in relation to an increasing emphasis on the specific qualities and circumstances of the artist’s own presence in the act of making art. By refuting the distancing of objective, disinterested artists from their artwork, this publication aims to discover how the artist’s ‘lived experience’ offers a locus for the viewer’s own activation as a particular, rather than universal, subject. Here, the work of art becomes a transient set of relations that includes the viewer as a central component in the work and its dispersal. Furthermore we may consider the performative self fashioning of ‘other’ bodies that arguably demand a different under- standing of what constitutes performance and art. With these things in mind in what ways can we fully interpret the statement that ‘art becomes you’?

This publication is available from Article Press at www.articlepress.co.uk and is distributed by Central Books, London.