Appearances of the Political

20 Sept 2019

The anthology of the NSU-study circle is here!

It has made its appearance as a special issue of Popular Inquiry - https://www.popularinquiry.com/ - (Volume 1 / 2019) edited by Noora-Helena Korpelainen, Olivia Glasser, and Emily Aiava.

It contains:
Raine Aiava, On Arriving: Introduction to the Appearances of the Political Anthology, pp. 1-8

Carsten Friberg, Political Aesthetics: A Philosophical Reflection, pp. 9-25

Elisabetta Di Stefano, The Power of the Gift: A Perspective of Political Aesthetics, pp. 26-35

Tomasz Ferenc, War Monuments as Vehicles of Memory and Activators of Social Action, pp. 36-46

Aniruddha Gupté, Synthesizing Solutions: An Exploration of the Modern Relevance of Socialist Design Principles Through the Medium of Plastics, pp. 47-63

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About Appearances of the Political

Appearances of the Political is a research network conecting participants in different fields from 25 different countries.

The aim is to investigate the appearances and the experiences of the political in contemporary democracies. What form does the political have today? How do we make sense out of it?

By the political we understand political acts and manifestations in all forms including not only debates and decisions but also institutional and material organization as well as communication and actions of everyday living. The political is thus a wider notion than political institutions and philosophies; it includes how our everyday is embedded in ideologies forming our thoughts and actions.

The focus on appearance is a focus on forms in which the political appears. This, again, covers a wide range of phenomena from the direct use of aesthetic means in the staging and presentation of politicians and events of political significance to the organization of our environment. A central phenomenon is the way the media aestheticizes politics making the media the heart of the everyday both for what is said and how it is said.

This topic is covered by a variety of disciplines such as aesthetics, rhetoric, communication, material culture studies, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, pedagogy, and philosophy. The aim of the study circle is to bring these different disciplines into dialogue based on expertise in each discipline and the importance of including knowledge from other disciplines.

The network began as a study circle in Nordic Summer University. Read the project description for the study circle here.

Coming events

28 February – 1 March, 2020

Winter Symposium: Representation of the City: Imagining and Reimagining Cityscape

Urban Studies: Between Creativity and Power

Riga, Latvia

4-10 August, seminar in Cēsis, Latvia

#2 teaser for programme

Monika Favara-Kurkowski, Mechanical reproducibility as an aesthetic category for design practice. Hybridization between design, theater, and photography.

In philosophy, discussions on “design objects” place the function to the fore. Such philosophical approaches can be found in Glenn Parsons, Allen Carlson and Jane Forsey’ books who focus mainly on the category of function to promote the aesthetic value of design. I argue that the evaluation of aesthetic experiences, based only on function, may impoverish the understanding of user satisfaction because it tries to fit

into culturally produced aesthetic categories.

The second task of this essay is to show that mechanical reproduction, understood as the condition of the philosophical definition of “design objects,” has been unjustly neglected. I believe that shifting the attention from the category of function to that of technical reproducibility reveals a new paradigm of user experience that enriches the philosophical perspective on design.

Finally, I point to the emancipatory aspect of the user experience, which manifests in the encounter with mass-produced objects, or, rather, that technical reproducibility materializes the place for a subversive potential in the user.

Laine Kristberga, Aestheic Categories of Performance Art - is that (ir)relevant?

Elisabetta Di Stefano, Artification between Aestheticization and Political Action

My paper will bring forward the relevance of a relationship among individuals in a urban space and how relationships acquire a political and aesthetical value. To achieve this end, I will focus the notion of Political Aesthetics and I will try to demonstrate how the processes of artification could be a tool of political action in this framework.

Following the idea of political understood as a relationship among individuals sharing benefits (Aristotle, Politics1253a) and as the art of taking care of mankind (Plato Pol. 274b-276c), and following the idea of aesthetics as a theory of perception (A. Baumgarten and G. Böhme), political aesthetics should focus on some transformations happening in an emotional and relational space. It should study how people can produce and perceive a transformation at the same time, or better to say, how a collaboration among people can change the world or, at least, the way of perceive it.

Within this theoretical background artification acquires an important role. The neologism artification, recently risen in the philosophical and artistic debate, has different theoretical nuances. After an overview of the different ideas on artification (Shapiro-Heinich; Ossi Naukkarinen; Thomas Leddy; Yuriko Saito), I will point out that artification can have a value of mere decoration – e.g. mural graffitis – or can mean a deeper transformation, triggering relational processes and regenerating experiences.

However, both perspectives of artification aim at urban requalification and can have consequence on several levels: 1. decorating peripheries and neglected space; 2. developing new way of sharing space through performing arts, sport and entertainment. Nevertheless, the latter meaning of artification is more significant than the former one. It better shows how art can acquire an educational value and produce an improvement not only in the urban area – become more beautiful – but also in the residents’ quality of life. In this direction, artification (from performance to street art) can contribute to shape the space, creating inclusive ambiance and, doing so, it acquire a political value.

Thorvald Gran, Sovereignty and democracy in nation states. Constraints on development. The case of Norway

The democratization of the political regime combined with the suggested democratic deficiency in the private economic sector and in bureaucracies, both public and private, is an expression of existing but withdrawn sovereignty. In an aesthetic perspective, the idea of a nearly complete democracy in Norway can be a veil covering the reality of the sovereignty potential, the reality of the military and police power (potential) of the Norwegian state.

The idea here is that sovereignty is a staying fact. Humans can use physical force towards others without assigning any value, dignity or right to the human – or animal – attacked. Humans develop norms that limit and counteract the unfolding of sovereign actions in the cultural field. In that field the language communities are of prime importance. Using language humans learn that they are moral members of communities; they produce a base- or proto-democratic norm system.

Because physical force is a social reality, political power implies control of physical, military and police power and in that control lies the possibility of sovereign actions. However, political regimes are confronted by a combination of base- or proto-democracies in language communities within their realm and by formalized democratic movements. Political regimes will therefore vary on the distribution and societal power of formalized democratic institutions, both as legal systems and task-oriented organizations.

Sovereign actions are a potential of political regimes, while a base democracy is at work within language communities. The idea here has been to test this relationship between sovereignty and democracy in the political history of Norway. Sovereign action (by owners) is a reality in organizations applying the work contract. In signing the contract, employees assign away the right of participation in strategic leadership of the organization. The work contract creates a deficiency of democracy in all the organizations where it is applied.

In the latter half of the 19^th century the Norwegian state moved from primarily control of legality to a substantive engagement in economic development, building infrastructure needed for modern capitalist production and trade. Through taxation and expansion of public bureaucracies, the state gained strategic control of business development. Later the welfare state similarly gained strategic control of the labor market, taking care of people who for different reasons were less useful in competitive business. Increased state power reduced the freedom of local communities, while the power of the national and municipal formal democracies increased. The need for activating sovereign actions internally receded.

Formal democracy, as the system where a community elects its leaders, can expand, probably right up to doors of top government and the military. However, sovereign actions can counter those developments. Politics is perhaps about this unequal struggle between sovereignty and democracy. It might be that the best antidote to sovereign military actions by states is – as Krasner suggests – democratic organizations of sovereign states.

Anete Vanaga, Agonistics of Belonging: Rethinking the Political Frontier

In this presentation a case study of Urban Cultural planning project in Riga, Latvia will be investigated, critically approaching the community strengthening activities through cultural practices as a tool to increase the participatory activity. I argue that with the destructive form the current neoliberalism takes, non-activity and non-participation is an important tool of resistance, which shouldn't be overlooked, but instead seen as an opportunity to critically look at the neoliberal politics today.

Therefore a post-hegemonic thought, a notion of a political frontier between those who belong, and those who don't instead of hegemonic identities, is provoked. By looking at the cultural planning strategies in micro-neighborhoods in Latvia, I argue that instead of creating a dialogue between different identities, creative approaches of destruction of attachments, as defined by Bruno Latour, are at work. In broader categories speaking it is the process of neoliberalization of the "Illiberal East". I argue that by employing the tool of ecology of practices, as defined by Isabelle Stengers, the borders of neoliberalism can be recognized, instead of continuation of the destruction of the dismissed attachments, giving space to an approach I aim to call the agonistics of belonging. Stengers refers to it as a confusion of attachments with universal obligations that allows practitioners destroy other practices by either not recognizing them or acknowledging them as invalid. By demystifying the universal obligations, the radical negativity of belonging can be recognized, facilitating coexistence instead of destruction, even if unrecognized, forming adversarial relationship (agonistic) with the other.

Carsten Friberg, Formation and politics

I wish to invite you to discuss two topics: formation/Bildung and politics.

The first relates to the appearance in 'appearances of the political'. If appearance means how something makes itself present in the environment and this appearance is a matter of physical structures in designing and organising the environment hence what is sensorial and what should be called aesthetic, then we can talk about how we are affected by the environment, i.e. ourselves "designed". Our concrete perceptual skills are formed which implies also our perception of the environment. Does that mean we are cultivated through the environment? Should we talk about appearances not only as political structures we find and characterise but also what find us and more important form us to characteris in specific ways? And is this forming then to be considered as instruction, education or Bildung?

This leads to the second question. Is this appearance of something political or simply of structures of power? When are we talking about power and when about politics? Is what I'm suggesting here appearances of powers rather than appearances of the political?

Past activities

2019

- 8 May, Ap.pol.-group seminar, Aalto University, Finland

2018

- 2-5 November, Aesthetics and Politics, seminar, Ascea, Italy

- 29 July-5 August, The Politics of Memory in Art, NSU-seminar 6/6, Fårö Kursgåd, Sweden

- 11 May, Ap.pol.-group seminar, University of Palermo, Italy

- 2-4 February, Political art and aesthetics in the everyday, NSU-seminar 5/6, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

2017

- 26 July-2 August, Action and Activism, NSU-seminar 4/6, Saulkrasti, Latvia

- 24-26 February, Aesthetics, Politics and Material Culture, NSU-seminar 3/6, University of Wrocław, Poland

2016

- 24-31 July, Appearances of the Political in 20th Century Culture, NSU-seminar 2/6, Orivesi, Finland

- 22-23 February, Identifying the Political, NSU-seminar 1/6, Riga, Latvia

20 Sept 2019

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