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All these questions can be placed within the historical context of art development. In the classical art tradition, knowledge, realization and morale are inseparable from artistic gesture. One of the crucial aesthetic and social explanations of artistic actions in times of the creation of “art institution” was Horace’s Ars Poetica and his vision of the role of art as something that should “educate and delight” (docere et delectare), or more precisely, something that teaches using other means, communicating knowledge and truths through aesthetic experiences. Modernism interrupts this tradition by creating the paradigm of abstraction and autonomy of visual language which claims that art should be seen as art, as a social activity whose language is an autonomous form. On the other hand, the art of 60ies and 70ies, reintroduces the role of artist-orator who dissolves “illusionist scenography” of artwork’s autonomous form (as an object of commodity fetishism) and appears “in the first person” thus creating aesthetic moment in the space of direct experience between artist and audience. Contemporary art shows interest for “outer world” where it again meets everyday life but also the reality of transformed capitalism. The borders between learning, information, aesthetic gesture, political act, entertainment and joy are very porous nowadays - art is used as a media for communicating information, education and political intervention, or it turns into a part of entertainment industry, in the same way that business or politics use performative and aesthetic forms for their goals.

★ jelena vesić is an independent curator, critic and lecturer. She is a co-author of the magazine Prelom - Journal for Images and Politics, Belgrade 2001 - 2009, and one of the founders if Prelom Kolektiv, Belgrade 2005 2010, active in publishing, research and exhibiting, connecting political theory and contemporary art. Since 2009, she has been a co-editor of the Journal Red Thread - Journal for Social Theory, contemporary art and activism, and a member of the journal Art Margins for art and theory (MIT Press) since 2011. She held her latest lectures at the international curator course at Gwangju biennale in Korea, at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, in New York (New Museum), at Bone festival in Bern, and at the Art University (curator studies) in Belgrade.

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New Theatre Tendencies

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