Second part of Beauty Unrealized brought together artists and theorists who reflect on their inspiration by previously existing works, whether films, art pieces, or books. Structured this way, this part opened up the space for discussion on two main levels. On the first level, we were interested in new definitions of cinema as an art form, whether seen as a deconstruction of the cinema as a medium (Cytter) or searching for redefinition of interpretation of the moving pictures (Michaud). On the second level, we wanted to bring in questions of the function of humour seen as artistic strategy (Hirschhorn) or seen as part of our sensory perception that recomplicates our conceptions of the ethics of the aesthetic (Garnet).

13.01.2007

Thomas Hirschhorn: How to Dance Philosophy? (video)

Conceived as a question and for the first time presented as an independent artwork, this video installation brings together in an absurd manner Georges Bataille, mute mannequin and a half-naked artist. Coming from Hirschhorn’s own logic of how to live philosophy, this peace gives a possibility to turn a cover of a book into a costume to wear and philosophy into a silent music on which to dance to.

Keren Cytter: Repulsion (films)

Repulsion consists of three short films and is based on Roman Polanski’s feature film of the same title from 1965. Cytter’s version deconstructs the original film, being focused on the main protagonist and the two supporting characters. This way, three short films serve as three layers of one movie that has no plot.

14.01.2007

Philippe-Alain Michaud: Cinema Attitude

We are witnessing today a significant switch of the presentation of moving images from the theaters, where they were commonly presented during the XX century, to the galleries. In the light of this displacement, we are compelled to produce a new definition of the film, not anymore from the restricted standing point of the history of cinema as a technical device for recording and projection, but from the enlarged standing point of the history of art as a new way to conceive the images. Philippe-Alain Michaud is a film curator at the Centre Pompidou. He has curated the last presentation of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris entitled “Le Movement des images”, on display until the end of January 2007. He is the author of Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion (Zone Books, 2004), Le Peuple des Images (Desclè de Brouwer, 2002) and Sketches. Histoire de l’art, cinéma (Kargo, 2006).

Robert Garnet: You Can’t be Serious: On the Pre-posterous Aesthetics of Humour

The lecture will examine the ways in which humour is an art of the ‘sensible’ requiring a ‘sense’ of humour on part of both artist and critic/recipient/participant: how humour offers a means of going beyond oppositions between irony and authenticity, aesthetic idealism and the anti-aesthetic, and recomplicates our conceptions of the ethics of the aesthetic. Robert Garnett is a critic and theorist based in London and Brussels. He has contributed to a number of international publications over the past 10 years, including Art Monthly, Metropolis M and Frieze. He is currently preparing a 3-part publication on contemporary art criticism for Bookworks, London.