What About Art?
The understanding of cultural goods and art is undergoing transformation. One significant complication thereby is the fact that "art" does not easily fit into the mass of cultural goods that surround it.
The understanding of cultural goods and art is undergoing transformation. One significant complication thereby is the fact that "art" does not easily fit into the mass of cultural goods that surround it.
Identity politics, post-colonial perspectives and the media transformation concerned therewith pose challenges to the traditional understanding of cultural goods and art: How do we understand, collect, show and market cultural goods today? How is the way in which art is produced, interpreted, supported, exhibited and sold currently changing? And last but not least: what is it that is operating as a cultural commodity under the banner of "art". The first two questions – even without answering the third – are not identical.
The search for locations for cultural goods and the determination of the freedom and boundaries of art overlap. This is particularly the case when aesthetic autonomy, cultural self-image and understanding of identity as well as the economic aspects of cultural goods and art come together, or when addressing the role of state and private galleries, collections and museum, publications and theaters. The CAS Research Focus addresses these questions from the perspectives of aesthetics, art history, law as well as literature and theater studies, because in these questions we find traces of a structural transformation of society and public life which can be understood as a transformation in the political concept of representation.