From Artwork to Net-Work: Affective Effects of Political Art

Abstract

Studies of political art and art activist practices often focus on representations and expect that art, in a clear-cut manner, provides a critique of, for instance, various forms of suppression. Yet practice often transgresses representational patterns, disciplinary boundaries, and traditional notions of the art-work. In this chapter I develop an affectively oriented methodological framework for investigating art political practices, the effect of which cannot merely be perceived as a matter of representation. The methodology relies on an understanding, not of the art-work as a coherent category, but of the net-work that emerges as an open-ended assemblage (Latour, 2005; Delanda, 2006; Anderson et al., 2010). The focus on the net-work has implications for the study of political art and affect. Because when the focus is the net-work, affect cannot be studied and identified on its own. Affect must be identified in the ways in which the net-work materializes.