{"id":22649,"date":"2012-10-16T12:14:20","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T12:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/magazine\/estetica-de-sistemas-o-como-ser-critico-condesde-el-arte\/"},"modified":"2017-11-13T12:24:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T12:24:56","slug":"systems-aesthetics-critical-withthrough-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/systems-aesthetics-critical-withthrough-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Systems aesthetics, or how to be critical with\/through art"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n

Burnham conceives art, says Skrebowski- as a relation of relations that, despite the evident similarities, as\u00a0Cristina Albu so rightly reflects<\/a>, goes way beyond the construct with which Bourriaud \u2013making use of the succulent term relational aesthetics \u2013 undertakes the (partial) description of an essential change in artistic praxis. The initial idea, in both cases, is that a shift has occurred,\u00a0\u201cfrom an object-oriented culture to a systems oriented culture\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(an approach that has germinated the contemporary transformation, described by Brea, from the ROM culture \u2013 of storage \u2013 to the RAM culture \u2013 of processing), however, it seems unfeasible to equate the undisguised reduction of the institutional context, that Bourriaud unequivocally favours, to Burnham\u2019s desire to take the exploration of \u201cthe conceptual limits of the system\u201d to its final consequences \u2013to a pure exercise of immanent self-criticism.<\/p>\n

It is interesting Luke Skrebowski\u2019s idea to recuperate, overcoming its ambiguity,\u00a0Burnham\u2019s system aesthetics<\/a>\u00a0as an explanatory principle of conceptualism or, to be more precise, and to cite him textually, as a\u00a0\u201cmethodological framework for considering post-formalist art as a whole\u201d<\/a>. Proposed in these terms, his theory facilitates an analysis of the roles of language and the structures of digital communication in the redefinition of the artistic context, in relation to the emergence of new modes of creation and distribution of knowledge.<\/p>\n

Systems aesthetics refutes the need for the material concretion of artistic creation as much as its autonomy, presupposing the explicit renunciation of its commodification and the consummation of the old avant-garde dream to dissolve art into life. All this is in tune with the contemporary proposals of Fluxus and, in particular, with Beuys\u2019 idea of\u00a0social sculpture<\/a>, a concept still in force, as evidenced by the current re-vindication of art as techn\u00e9 -knowledge oriented towards action- i.e., the verification that the artist can intervene directly in the construction (programming) of reality (hardware and software, both literally and figuratively) and that the artist\u2019s working space extends way beyond the ambit of mere representation and its institutional context.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n