Can Art Change the World?
Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière on Art and Politics
In 2000, Santiago Sierra hired six undocumented migrants to sit under cardboard boxes in his exhibition at the Kunst-Werke in Germany. In 2016, Ai Weiwei hung 14,000 lifejackets on the façade of Berlin’s Konzerthaus to commemorate the drowning of migrants in the Mediterranean. And, as part of her Tate Turbine commission in 2018, Tania Bruguera covered the floor of the hall with heat-sensitive tape and invited the public to lay or sit down; the heat from their bodies allowed a large image of a Syrian refugee to emerge on the floor. Lke many contemporary artworks, these works were designed to bring attention to a pressing global issue. But, can contemporary art actually affect change in the world? This is the question we will consider at our next session of Making & Meaning Conversation by looking at the work of sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, and philosopher, Jacques Rancière.