Transformation Through Normativity: Human Rights as Transcultural Aesthetic Medium of Global Contemporary Arts and Vice Versa

June 22, 2023:
Lecture by Lisa Stuckey on the Panel 1 “Aesthetic Decenterings: Terminologies as Critical Media”, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ästhetik, DGAE Plattform #2: Transkulturelle Medienästhetik / Transcultural Media Aesthetics, organized by Em­ma­nu­el Alloa, Elke Bip­pus, Chris­toph Brun­ner, and Stef­fi Hobuß

June 22–24, 2023, Leuphana University Lüneburg

ABSTRACT. In face of decolonial critiques of contemporary global arts, aesthetics, and human rights — questioning the latter’s origin in the imperialist duality of “modernidad/colonialidad” (Quijano) — Theory of Change and Human Rights-Based Approaches seem to align with instrumental understandings of arts and aesthetics. When socially-engaged arts like social sculpture, community-based art, activist art, “arte útil” (Bruguera), “propaganda art” (Staal), or “climate summit art” (Burchert) get linked to international human rights discourses and instruments (declarations, resolutions, conventions), transformation is sought through normativity, at times conceived as universality. Taking up philosophical debates on the functions and purposes of the arts (Eusterschulte/Krüger/Siegmund 2020), publications in the emerging academic-activist field of human rights and the arts (see, e.g., Turner/Webb 2016, Gómez 2021, Gantheret/Guibert/Stolk 2023) are subject to a close-reading, seeking to rule out simplistic conception of the communicative qualities of arts and aesthetics (potential affectivity, illustrative power, and societal efficacy, etc.). Which aesthetic notions are put to the test when transculturally applicable human rights become, beyond their relevance regarding content and infrastructure, an aesthetic medium for contemporary arts? The premise of the lecture is that the emerging field gives rise to new forms of transcultural media aesthetics, through whose discursive strands the field can in turn be conceptualized.