Normative Divisions and New Exclusions: Aesthetic Territorialism in Contemporary Art

这个项目旨在制作一个新的单频道视频艺术作品，探讨当代西方民主中公共空间的秩序和规范如何与个性化的自由主义政治相联系。通过考察哲学理论、文化文献和社会空间结构的历史条件，将“批评文化”或“差异文化”作为抵制或评论制度权力问题的一种手段，本书旨在提出这样的问题：这种文化政治是否以及如何帮助和教唆权威结构，或者它是否使它们变得不那么稳定。这件作品将在洛杉矶拍摄，在我返回伦敦时完成，并在项目的高潮与伦敦MOT国际画廊联合展出。这项研究以美国洛杉矶为主要背景。洛杉矶的社会和文化地理是一个例子，非常出色的自由主义原则的个性如何秩序的社会制度，证明了在边界划分的社会空间和封闭的社区。在洛杉矶进行研究，我的目标是研究历史性的“流亡现代主义”的建筑和理论，这一术语归因于战后德国作家和哲学家社区，包括托马斯·曼，贝托尔特·布雷希特和西奥多·阿多诺，他们在20世纪40年代定居在洛杉矶。我试图测试他们的抵抗和退出洛杉矶文化的哲学在多大程度上与今天洛杉矶规划、建筑和社会住房中看到的安全和保护政治相一致。该研究将包括为期10天的探索性访问洛杉矶进行理论研究和实际准备工作，包括：a）研究、参观和记录与“流亡现代主义”/布雷希特、托马斯曼和西奥多·阿多诺布的房屋相关的建筑。c）确定未来拍摄的时间和地点。d）与盖蒂研究所的朱利叶斯·舒尔曼档案馆合作，研究洛杉矶建筑的历史文献和美学表现。洛杉矶人）确认洛杉矶可用于拍摄的技术设备）与研究人员和画廊主会面，讨论项目在此访问之后，我将花时间在英国发展工作，并准备返回洛杉矶拍摄这件作品，之后作品将被编辑，评分并完成。这项研究的核心是质疑艺术如何参与重新配置我们所理解的“共性”，这是如何与我们对批判性艺术实践的概念相一致的，以及艺术如何（以及是否）能够产生新的协议，改变和反对那些被认为是既定的和制度化的协议。本项目旨在研究这些主张的可能性，同时认识到它们对艺术政治权力的理想化存在问题。为了做到这一点，我的研究通过流亡现代主义者的作品将差异文化作为一种规范，它现在如何在艺术世界中存在，以及它如何在这种有边界的公共空间文化中得到证明。他们共同面临的问题是创造私人伪民主，限制了他们重新配置政治对我们的意义的潜力。这个研究项目旨在探索这些私人领域如何产生意识形态叙事，以及这些神话如何在公共领域的文学，社会空间和艺术品中表现出来。在创作这一主题的新作品时，我会问，在艺术、哲学和社会空间中看到的社区形象是否以及如何能够在政治领域建立新的领土。

This project seeks to produce a new single channel video artwork that explores how the ordering and regulation of communal space in contemporary western democracy is connected to a liberalist poltics of individuation. Through examining the historical conditions of philosophical theory, cultural literature and the architecture of social space that have priveleged 'a culture of critique', or 'a culture of difference', as a means to resist or comment on the problems of institutional power, the work aims to raise questions regarding if and how this politics of culture aids and abets structures of authority, or if it makes them less stable now. The artwork will be filmed on location in Los Angeles, completed on my return to London and exhibited in association with MOT International Gallery, London at the culmination of the project.The research takes as its primary context, Los Angeles, USA. The social and cultural geography of Los Angeles is the example, par excellence of how the liberalist principle of individuality orders social systems, evidenced in the boundary demarcation of social space and gated communities. Conducting research in Los Angeles I aim to examine the architecture and theory of a historic 'exile modernism', a term attributed to the post-war German community of writers and philosophers including Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno who settled in Los Angeles in the 1940's. I seek to test to what extent their philosophy of resistance and withdrawal from the culture of Los Angeles is coterminous with a politics of security and protection seen in Los Angeles planning, architecture and social housing today. The research will involve a 10 day exploratory visit to Los Angeles to conduct theoretical research and practical preparatory work including:a) Researching, visiting and documenting the architecture from and associated with 'exile modernism' / the houses of Brecht, Thomas Mann and Theodor Adornob) Confirm times and venues for future filmingc) Work on location and to arrange preparatory shots, lighting of interior/exteriors and day/night work and the developments of the style of the video.d) Study historical documentation and aesthetic representations of Los Angeles architecture by working with the Julius Shulman archive at the Getty Institute, Los Angelese) Confirm technical equipment available in Los Angeles for the shoote) Meet with researchers and gallerists to discuss the projectAfter this visit I will spend time developing the work in the UK and prepare for a return trip to Los Angeles to film the piece, following which the work will be edited, scored and completed.Central to this research is a questioning of how art participates in reconfiguring what is understood to be our 'commonality', how this squares with our conception of a critical art practice and how (and if) art is capable of producing new agreements that transform and dissent from those that are considered to be established and institutional. This project seeks to examine the possibilities for these claims, whilst recognising that they hold within them a problematic idealization of arts' political power. In order to do this, my research makes connections between the culture of difference as a norm through the work of exile modernists, how it is present now, within the artworld, and how it is also evidenced in this culture of boundaried communal space. Together they share the problem of creating private pseudo-democracies that limit their potential to reconfiguring what politics is and means to us. This research project seeks to explore how these private territories produce ideological narratives and how these mythologies are literally manifest in literature, social space and art objects within the public domain. In producing new work on this theme I ask if, and how, images of community seen in art, philosophy and social space are capable of establishing new territories in the political field.