The Politics of Aesthetics of Contemporary Art in Slovenia and its Avant-Garde Sources

Abstract

In addressing contemporary participatory, community-based art practices in Slovenia, this paper is inspired by Jacques Rancière’s rehabilitation of aesthetics as a new philosophy of aisthesis. This new philosophy of sensation and perception is radically different from the aesthetics and philosophy of art that primarily concern the aesthetics of a work of art. Rancière prefers to talk about the aesthetic regime of art that addresses the complex and contradictory relationship between the autonomy of art and the overcoming of the boundaries separating art and life. Such an overcoming is in the foundation of both avant-garde art as well as contemporary art practices, which are the focus of our discussion. The efforts of emerging participatory art in the 1990s to achieve social change follow the avant-garde movements of the 20th century. The paper aims to contribute to the analysis of community-oriented art from aesthetic and political perspectives and to evaluate the significance of the avant-garde heritage with respect to continuity in the articulation of common/community in art.