Transversal : cutting a system of lines.
“Transversal politics recognizes the different power positions among participants/groups in the dialogue, but it approaches these differences with equal respect and recognition of each participant/group.”
Encroachment: a gradual advance beyond usual or acceptable limits.
Final notes on Artificial Hells by Claire Bishop.
At the end of her book on participatory art and the politics of spectatorship book, Bishop proposes the value of art or artistic imagination in relation to ethics, politics and ideology. At risk of being devalued, she claims it is necessary to recognise art’s function as a negator. She defines artistic imagination as a “transversal encroachment of ideas”, an imagination that constantly throws systems of value into question. Art’s ability to hold nuance and question the parameters that define our ideas, including ethics and morality, can be seen as a powerful tool for social transformation without relying on those predetermined parameters of sucess defined by our institutions and cultures. This is her definition of the tranversal encroachment of ideas. It is the negative characterteric of art, to critique and deconstruct as much as an artistic project can construct.
Bishop states that art can overlap with political projects while not needing sole resonsibility of devising and implenting them. I find this a very valuable description of the artistic process that is often devalued for not providing a constructive alternative to it’s critique, or even being narrowed to it’s critique. In Bishop’s vision, art can be seen as a continual play of mutual tensions, and will lose it’s potential in social process to “constantly throw systems of value into question” if it is expected to align with systems of value such as morality or productive change.To liberate art from questions of morality and politics is the more dangerous road of change.
I am quite affected by these descriptions and feel more clarity about the distictions between art/entertainment or art/ethics and such. Art feels like the infinitely indulgent but also powerfully unexpected force. Today alienation remains with new orders that form it. I feel more free to wonder how participation can exist in my practice without needing to craft a perfect political map for our future steps.