Artists are usually summoned to war after the event. They are asked to help give form to the acts of commemoration, redemption and memory. During the Owar on terror1, there has been the recognition that being a respondent is impossible. Equally unbearable is the role of a belated interpreter. Artists have sought to comment while the war is on. In a self-critical response to an exhibition at the ICA in London called Memorial to the Iraq War, the artist Liam Gillick urged himself and his fellow artists to:step outside of their normal practice and stand as citizens against the delusions of their leaders. This is an exceptional moment, where it is necessary for some to suspend their normal work in order to make a direct statement. SIt is no good looking back to some earlier moment of apparent cultural consensus. We have to look instead towards art as a carrier of differences and a perfect form for the revelation of paradox.
In this lecture I will examine a range of strategies and techniques employed by artists to confront the politics of our time. It is a critical journey that requires the rethinking of the affects of fear and hope, and an acknowledgement of the vitality of curiosity in the midst of terror. My aim is not to decode the meaning in art as if this would reveal hidden truths, but to start from the traces and marks it offers in ongoing process of perceptual transformation. Hence, I will argue that critical thinking, like art, requires a participatory methodology. The critic must be in the time/place of the event, and not just a belated commentator of its effects. I will also argue that a new contextual framework is necessary to address the complex transnational dialogues that both motivate and shape contemporary visual practices. This will require us to go beyond and below the nation-state paradigm and thereby rethink the interplay between the global and the local.

Bio Byline

Nikos Papastergiadis was educated at the University of Cambridge and is Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include odernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei and Lyon Biennales.