O angažiranom i didaktičkom u umjetnosti / On Engaged and Didactic in Art

Abstract

Experience is never simple, one-dimensional, mono-medial, or temporally linear: its rhizomatic form spreads through space and time, and its scope, complexity, and intensity are defined by its subject. In a similar way, those strategies, that may also be epistemic, manifest within art: those are strategies derived from such experience and that reflect it. They imply the need to understand the polysemies of the world and, in practice, involve avoiding the affirmation of known truths. If we accept the assumption that art has the ability to be a tool for improving life, then this ability can only be located in empowering the audience, specifically through pointing to ways of avoiding the passive adoption of narratives and identities shaped by dominant systems of thought. The goal is provocation: instead of presenting drama before the eyes of the audience, it offers a "drama of perception" whose action continues in the life of the spectator. The outcome is art with active participants, rather than viewers – passive voyeurs seduced by images (Rancière). If destabilization of meaning is a prerequisite for creating space for fantasy, does art that didactically delivers unambiguous messages hinder the establishment of an emancipated spectator and thus obstruct the realization of its self-determined function—engagement and change? And does it consequently become a means of disempowering the institution of art within social frameworks?