The Dynamics of Resonance: Politics, Art and the Event

This paper examines new directions in contemporary 'political' art. It asks how art might be understood to comment on the "event, and to engage a politics, even as it appears to abandon representational modes in favour of non-signifying, affective processes.

How does an aesthetic of the political operate when the relationship of image to referent is unstable?

The paper will make reference to works by Thomas Demand, Zarina Bhimji, Alfredo Jaar and others, identifying some intersections with the work of philosophers of aesthetics and politics such as Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Ranciere.

Jill Bennett: Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, UNSW.