VACD Seminar: Ahu Antmen (Marmara University)
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Visual
Arts and Visual Communication Design Program
Contemporary Art,
Actual Reality and Spectacle
by
Ahu Antmen
Thursday, 3
June 2010
14.00
FASS 2034
Abstract: Contemporary art since the 1960’s has increasingly blurred the boundaries between art and life, using space, time and the body in ways that embodies actual reality as a principle feature of the artwork. Touching on issues related to a vast array of social problems, much of recent artistic production is a form of social critique, and can thus be seen as a contemporary form of ‘social realism’. However, in a world where mass culture rules and virtual reality is unbound, our relation to what we call ‘reality’ is changing, and thus also its artistic expression. In the light of some recent work in which actual reality is the most prominent feature of the work, the boundaries blurred are perhaps not only between art and life, but between actual reality and spectacle.