curating.org
Post-Graduate Programme
in Curating, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Considering social and ecological crises, from nationalisms regaining strength to global warming, it is of vital importance to find new, more suitable ways of recognizing entanglements of earthly matter, as has been stressed by Donna Haraway and others. My talk focuses on the crucial role aesthetics – defined as modes of perception and as poetical practices ­– plays in this endeavor.
Against the backdrop of Haraway’s and Édouard Glissant’s theories of relation I discuss how research-based art installations, which combine diverse materials, broad-ranging methods, and multiple agents, present us with opportunities to perceive socio-historical as well as bio-ecological enmeshments of globalization in non-reductive ways. Arguing that such installations bid farewell to the single-subject-observer in favor of an actualization through a multi-perspectively creative collective, the talk elaborates on the challenges this poses to art theory and criticism and advocates vulnerable forms of theory practice that get involved with polylogical constellations beyond the single-authored essay.

Ines Kleesattel (Dr.phil.) is an art theorist and cultural scientist with a background in fine arts, philosophy, and art education. She teaches aesthetics and art theory at various universities, has published extensively on art, critique and politics, and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts. Currently her main research interests are multi-perspectivity and situated knowledges in artistic research, politics of aesthetic theories and practices, and an aesthetics of post-colonial translocality.