01 ENTKUNSTUNG

There is an unsatisfied reason in the experience of art and it’s exactly this dissatisfaction that motivates us to study and to rethink contemporary art practices. We are facing the winter of our discontent, however, the future is more promising than we think. Forty years ago Adorno wrote: “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist … In many ways, expansion appears as contradiction”.

Philosophies and theories come, as always, post festum. They stay behind artistic expression when it comes to understanding and giving answers according to the Zeitgeist of every historical moment. They need time to reflect and to give explanations to any kind of cultural manifestation of our society, including the aesthetic one. The essence of art is to communicate, to give reasons, to promote dialogue and to be intelligible by finding its receptor. Nevertheless, the atomization and plurality of practices and discourses on art have altered the dialogue between the artwork and the spectator, making this act of communication and understanding more complex than it has ever been.

That is why, we believe, it is the task of every artist, academic, philosopher or theoretician, “to find a form that accommodates the mess”, as Samuel Beckett perfectly stated.

—ENTKUNSTUNG