Semblance and Event

2013

Boek; (XII, 220 p.) ill

Met bibliografie

Events are always passing; to experience an event is to experience the passing. But how do we perceive an experience that encompasses the just-was and the is-about-to-be as much as what is actually present? Brian Massumi, drawing on the work of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and others, develops the concept of - semblance- as a way to approach this question. It is, he argues, a question of abstraction, not as the opposite of the concrete but as a dimension of it: -lived abstraction.- A semblance is a lived abstraction. Massumi uses the category of the semblance to investigate practices of art that are relational and event-oriented - variously known as interactive art, ephemeral art, performance art, art intervention - which he refers to collectively as the -occurrent arts.- Each art practice invents its own kinds of relational events of lived abstraction, to produce a signature species of semblance. The artwork's relational engagement, Massumi continues, gives it a political valence just as necessary and immediate as the aesthetic dimension.

Located in: GEENGAGEERDE KUNST

ISBN: 978-0-262-52536-7

VUBIS: 2:100391