Ordinary Situations and Artworld Declarations

Abstract: Socially engaged art presents social situations to be understood, experienced, and evaluated as works of art while they simultaneously retain everyday non-art functionality. This article begins with an account of the definitional and evaluative concerns that socially engaged art engenders, outlining the debates around the relative importance of ethical and aesthetic values that result from this unsettled relationship between art and non-art. Based on this account, I argue that all socially engaged art requires successful performative bids that declare the work to be art and that it is possible to identify the felicity conditions in which these bids are likely to be successful, as well as the perlocutionary effects that occur when a situation is categorized as art. I apply this analytic framework in a discussion and comparison of pieces by Santiago Sierra and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, demonstrating how this framework facilitates assessments that account for the works as art, while interrogating and evaluating the ethics of their categorization as art.

Location
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
Extent
Online-Ressource
Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Ordinary Situations and Artworld Declarations ; volume:6 ; number:1 ; year:2023 ; extent:14
Open Philosophy ; 6, Heft 1 (2023) (gesamt 14)

Creator
Muller, Otto

DOI
10.1515/opphil-2022-0269
URN
urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023093014022182875574
Rights
Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
Last update
14.08.2025, 10:50 AM CEST

Data provider

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Associated

  • Muller, Otto

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