On three occasions, from March 19 to May 20, 2012, from May 6 to June 30, 2013 and from March 10 to May 11, 2014, 17, Institute of Critical Studies (based in Mexico City) and Trimukhi Platform organised an online seminar of eight weeks in order to thoroughly examine today’s artistic practices. Dictated by Jean-Frédéric Chevallier in Spanish, this seminar was entitled: ‘Las artes del presentar. Filosofía y arte contemporáneo‘ [The Arts of Presenting, Philosophy and Contemporary Art]. What effects does an artistic device produce? How is this device built? Is there necessarily a link between the first and the second question? Beyond: which articulations allow to pass from the aesthetic composition of a work to the production of thought by the spectators of this one? Jean-Frédéric Chevallier explained: “Often, when we look at an artwork, we place ourselves on the side of meaning. We assume that the artist has intended to say whatever it is that we hear or see. We forget that it is our senses that are first of all touched, and that this sensitive awakening gives rise to our desire to find a sense in our perception. As we forget this, we lend to the artist the intention of seeking to express exactly what we ourselves have understood. But today the artist’s task is no longer to tell us something. The artist’s task is about something else. It consists in inspiring us with a desire to know more – not about the work, not about the artist, nor his or her intentions – but about whatever suddenly takes hold of us and moves us.” During the seminar, personal aesthetic experiences (watching a film, going to see a theatre or a dance piece, reading a novel, observing a painting, listening an art sound work, etc.) alternated with the theoretical analysis of the process that these experiences covered. The questioning was constantly revived by the study of philosophical texts by Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Rancière. The seminar was also organised at MACE, Kolkata, from March 16 to April 13, 2013 as a 5 sessions certificate course on ‘Arts and sensations’. Several aesthetic experiences were proposed and then analysed in details.
seminar proposed by
17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos, Mexico
MACE, India
and Trimukhi Platform
