Aesthetic Dividuations in a Globalized Art World

Authors

  • Michaela Ott

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i21.356

Keywords:

dividuation, participation, contemporary art practices, Afropolitanism, African films, composite-cultural expressions, big art exhibitions

Abstract

As a professor of philosophy in the art academy of Hamburg, I deal with contemporary art practices; as a theorist of aesthetics I try to determine what kind of aesthetic and artistic developments seem to be significant for our times, and which kind of philosophical theories I can offer in order to better conceptualize and understand the given art productions. At the same time, I attempt to transcend contemporary tendencies and concepts and to foster students’ art practices in a way that makes them meaningful for the future.

This lecture seeks to provide a possible interpretation of actual art practices in a globalized world, reflecting also on big art exhibitions such as Documenta 14 and on African films. It sketches a specific aesthetic program called Afropolitanism as an understanding which could be conceived of as paradigmatic for our globalized times. Afropolitanism is a term coined by the South African theorist Achille Mbembe in one of his 2010 book Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisé. Starting from there I want to offer a philosophical concept that goes far beyond the European context and hopes to provide a possible conceptual frame for a more complex understanding of the culturally and artistically entangled and hybridized expressions of our days, including those of human subjectivation. I call this concept dividuation as I have explained further in my book Dividuations: Theories of Participation, which was published in English in 2018.

 

Article received: December 15, 2019; Article accepted: January 31, 2029; Published online: April 15, 2020; Original scholarly paper

Author Biography

Michaela Ott

Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg
Germany

 

Michaela Ott, Professor of aesthetic theories at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany. Main research topics: poststructualist philosophy, aesthetics of film and art, theories of space, affection and dividuation, questions of artistic knowledge, biennial research, researches in postcolonial questions, in African and Arab films. Main publications: Deleuze – an introduction, Hamburg 2005; Affection. An aesthetic-epistemological figure, Munich 2010; Timing of Affect. Epistemologies of Affection, ed. with Marie-Luise Angerer and Bernd Bösel, Zurich 2014; dividuations, theories of participation, London,   New York 2018; Welches Außen des Denkens? Französische Theorien in postkolonialer Kritik (Which outside ot thought? French theories in postcolonial critique), Wien, Berlin 2019.

References

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Published

15.04.2020

How to Cite

Ott, M. (2020). Aesthetic Dividuations in a Globalized Art World. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (21), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i21.356