Transitional Aesthetics - Contemporary Art at the Edge of Europe

Using the way in which artists from the former Eastern bloc perceive the experience of EU integration and transition from a Soviet past as a conceptual launching pad, this book explores how artists critically inhabit a permanent state of ''in-between'' to capture the simultaneous existence of multiple and overlapping temporalities. Transitional aesthetics are artistic strategies that disrupt and interrogate ideologically loaded trajectories of cultural, social, or political transition. Examples of such trajectories include the movement from totalitarianism to democracy (post-socialism), from war to freedom and reconciliation (post-conflict), and from the edges of Europe to its centre (inclusion in the European Union). These transitional states include: the future orientation of (failed) socialism and the perpetual present of global capital; the history of unresolved past conflicts and reconciliation through ''transitional justice''; nationalist obsessions with the past and the cultural appeal of kitsch and retro objects in fashion, film and music; and the uncertain future promise of EU membership and resurgence of global right-wing populism, headed by figures like Berlusconi, Le Pen, and Trump. Tra tional Aesthetics shows that apprehending time in contemporary art is fundamental to capturing the lived experience of a permanent state of instability; particularly relevant to Europe in the contemporary moment. In a world that has entered ''accelerated transition'' towards instability, understanding this experience has broad and resonating relevance for politics, art and society.>

About the author

Uroš Cvoro is Associate Professor in Art Theory at UNSW Australia, Arts, Design & Architecture. His research interests include contemporary art and politics, cultural representations of nationalism, post-socialist and post-conflict art. His books include Transitional Aesthetics: Art at The Edge of Europe (2018) and Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia (2014). With Kit Messham-Muir, he is co-author of Images of War in Contemporary Art: Terror and Conflict in the Mass Media (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Product details

• Authors: , Uro'53 Cvoro, Uros Cvoro, Uroš Cvoro, Uros (Senior Lecturer At the Unsw Art & Des Cvoro, Uros (senior lecturer at the UNSW Art & Design Cvoro, Uros (senior lecturer at the UNSW Art & Design) Cvoro
• Assisted by: Jane Tormey (Editor), Gillian Whiteley (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2018
• EAN: 9781350053410
• ISBN: 978-1-350-05341-0
• No. of pages: 184
• Series: Radical Aesthetics - Radical Art; Radical Aesthetics-Radical Art
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, POLITICAL SCIENCE / General, PHILOSOPHY / Social, PHILOSOPHY / Political, PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics, Social & political philosophy, social and political philosophy, Philosophy: aesthetics, Political Geography, Baltic and other Indo-European languages, Baltic & other Indo-European languages