I\u2019m not so sure that one can speak of the function of the political being assigned to art. For me personally it was an arduous process in countless small steps until I managed to stabilise my living situation as a \u201cpolitical artist\u201d. Selling art alone was very difficult, and that\u2019s why I\u2019ve extending the reach of my artistic practice to include working at schools and universities. In my experience, art that takes a critical position on both state and society as well as the established art business always has a hard time of it. I believe that this situation hasn\u2019t changed today, one shouldn\u2019t be deceived by the success of a few less politically and socially engaged artists. Moreover, most of the socially engaged projects, such as those successfully shown at diverse biennales in the 1990s, are scarcely still in demand today.
\nIt was 1995 when I realised my first large project \u201cDie neue Rechte \u2013 Materialien f\u00fcr die Demontage\u201d together with Oliver Ressler in public space. Montaging quotations, our poster series targeted New Right ideologies. Back then there was little understanding for such overtly political art. There was even discussion about whether it was appropriate for artists to do something like that. One suggestion was that we should weigh the printing ink of the letters and relate it to the weight of the political statement on the poster. Only then could one speak of art. These were the kind of ideas put forward. In Vienna, a broader politicizing of art finally took place in the 2000s, in response to the FP\u00d6, J\u00f6rg Haider\u2019s right-wing populist and anti-immigrant party, coming to power. This wave of politicization abated however after a year.
\nOne group that was much discussed in Austria during the 1990s was Wochenklausur. This group insisted that art had to combine social and civic engagement with real change. Many in the Vienna scene smiled at this, and even today Wochenklausur, despite considerable international success, has little or no significance for the Vienna art establishment.
\nIn the 1990s there was one development that led to an institutional\/organisational basis for socially engaged artists, but also to a polarisation in terms of how it was judged, one that still exists today: artists, activists and theorists formed collectives with the aim of realising socially engaged and political projects, but as a consequence the detractors fundamentally rejecting such an understanding of art grew as well. Collective and engaged art was perceived as a threat to art and aesthetic autonomy. Since then the fronts have hardened: a certain inflexibility is discernible in the field of engaged and political art, there\u2019s an inert deference to the criteria of \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d, while opposed to this, it is denied that such art could have any form of aesthetic value, so it is expected that political art is to resist every form of \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d. Art would then be political when it proves capable of shocking the viewer\u2019s moral sensibility. But I don\u2019t think that social and political art can be separated from either the aesthetic or the moral sphere. It would be interesting for me to see if one could translate Adorno\u2019s conception of the autonomy of art onto the current situation. Adorno\u2019s idea of aesthetic autonomy is that it \u2013 outside the constraints of society, outside the administered world \u2013 is able to mediate the semblance of a different life. What\u2019s your take on this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"