Theory Now
»Theory« and contemporary art maintain an uneasy relationship. Post-structuralism, feminism, post-colonialism and other trends of thought have complex effects on art, whether as emancipatory promises, instrumentalisations or indispensable concomitant discourses. These effects range from uncritical acceptance, dialogic engagement and mutual inspiration, to vehement rejection. Reason enough to enquire after the present state of »theory formation« with regard to contemporary artistic production – its pertinence and irrelevance, its obsolescence and topicality, its eclecticisms and innovations.
First of all, there is the »participatory promise« of contemporary art: the desire to overcome subject-object divisions by the privileged inclusion of the viewers. In her article, Suzana Milevska investigates these promises of an art based on participation and involvement, and ends up with a problematisation of the concept of community. This latter was also a main focus of the French »maitre-penseurs« - a phase in the history of theory that seems gradually to be coming to an end and which Nicolas Siepen examines in the light of its retrospective appropriation. The numerous theoretical approaches associated with the US journal »October« alone give an idea of how much French philosophy of the post-war period has influenced recent art historiography. Konstantin Akinsha takes a close look at the outline they give of twentieth-century art, not without pointing out the blind spots of this approach and some Eastern European counterparts.
This is supplemented by further application studies, such as when Edit András emphasises the specific hostility towards theory evinced by a post-communist art industry that is increasingly governed by the market. Or when the symptom of new »theory obsessions« is examined, taking the example of the younger French scene as a case in point. This issue also features a project by the Chilean artist Maria Navarro concerned with the historical association of cybernetics with the political regime in Chile at the start of the seventies. Another pertinent example of how theory formation continually permeates other social areas in an often unexpected, though never unproblematic, fashion.