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English summary of my PhD-dissertation
Torben
Sangild: Objective Sensibility
- On Objectification in Contemporary
Art and Music with Reflections on the Decisive Role of Sensibility in
Artistic Expression, Experience and Critical Potential
The
Neo-Avant-Garde has objectified the artistic gesture and, in various ways,
stressed its mediated, coded, conceptual, technological and institutions
character. This was a decisive step away from a mythical cherishing of
subjectivity and spontaneity in a romantic and expressionistic idiom.
Through
analyses of works of art and music and through reflections of aesthetic
expression, experience and autonomy, I suggest a theory of “objective
sensibility.” My point is that the sensuous and emotional aspects of art
do not become irrelevant because of this objective turn; sensibility is
still decisive in the expression and experience of art. This argument is
informed by an unorthodox reading of Theodor Adorno’s aesthetics with
contemporary perspectives.
In my
analysis of Andy Warhol’s disaster paintings, I emphasize the way the
indifferent, cool gesture is itself expressive. The expressivity and the
cynical gesture work together dialectically. The repetition of the tragic
motif, the muddy surface, the printing technology and the titles
synthesize a complex signification between mediated superficiality and
profane praying.
In the
“Sparagmos” essay I analyze four electroacoustic works (by Karlheinz
Stockhausen, Herbert Eimert, Luigi Nono and Steve Reich) all employing
electronically fragmented human voices. They treat highly traumatic events
– the holocaust and the Bikini nuclear testings - with depersonalized
expressions. The objectifying, technological employment of the voices
places itself between speech and muteness, between therapeutic
recollection and precaution against the violence of language. Technology
and the human merge and the sound objects are subjected to serial systems
in an objectified sensibility.
The third
close analysis, “Glitch – the Beauty of Malfunction” (written and
published in English, see above) treats a new genre in electronica. Glitch
music incorporates the sounds of technological malfunctions, expressing a
peculiarly fragile sensibility and at the same time a self-critique of
technology.
Apart from
these close readings, I examine more briefly Iannis Xenakis,
Gerhard Richter, Jenny Holzer, Gordon Matta-Clark, John Klima and several
movements in art and music.
In “Crying
without tears” I reflect on the aesthetic concept of “expression” in
Adorno with reference to the objectifying development mentioned above. I
argue that objects are able to express emotions and that an emphatically
indifferent gesture relates to an emotional sensibility.
Aesthetic
experience is the topic of the next chapter, unfolding a dialectic of
subject and object centered on the object. In the experience, the subject
employs the sensory apparatus in order to register the expression of the
artwork. This experience cannot simply be called communication.
Furthermore, I emphasize the intimate relations between thought, sensation
and emotion.
Finally, I
topicalize Adorno’s concept of autonomy, aiming at a pertinent
contemporary definition. Art is autonomous when choosing its own rules, be
they contextual or determined. Moreover, a minimal autonomy is found in
the inevitable aesthetic gaze. I argue that autonomy in Adorno is more
avant-gardistic, political and self-critical than commonly read.
In
the epilogue, I suggest further perspectives related to other arts and
theories aiming at a contemporary aesthetics of sensibility.
If you have any comments, please send
me an email
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