1. Engaging towards autonomy: The paradigm of the artist
“Dance, architecture, and music do not imitate anything, they create a world.”
Cornelius Castoriadis
My analysis will follow Cornelius Castoriadis ‘project of autonomy’ to argue the political role of the artist as subject of action. I will emphasize the critical dimension of art to the predetermined and institutionalized meanings and choices moving away from repetition and sameness heading towards a different way of being. This ‘different way of being’ refers to Castoriadis’ ‘project of autonomy’ opening possibilities for radical transformation through the transition from a static-passive practice of living (heteronomy) to another practice of living, which is under constant review-creation (autonomy). The assumptions that imbue this essay are: (a). contemporary art and can be a political practice of autonomy that can suggest new architectural approaches to art, (b). the artist can be considered a political-autonomous subject empowering democratization and social change, (c). the creation of an artwork can be linked to the emergence of new common spaces. I will begin by rediscussing the concept of autonomy in art to interlink politics, autonomy and contemporary art practice.
Castoriadis’ ‘project of autonomy’ is identified with politics as ‘a self-reflective collective activity’ which does not focus on individual institutions and issues, but instead examines and continuously questions the institutionalized society (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 79). Castoriadis examines culture as a dimension of politics (politics in relation to the establishment of society as a whole and not in relation to politicians, presidents, elections, etc.) and politics as a dimension of culture. The ‘project of autonomy’ having a broad aesthetic and cultural content, can be placed in time before the overall social change empowering the movement to this direction (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 16–17). And so, the radical transformation of society cannot be realized without the contribution of culture.
The work of art, according to Castoriadis, is that which questions “the functional and the everyday” by offering access to a different world (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 46–47). The artwork or the architectural design that can be linked to the ‘project of autonomy’ needs to be imbued with values compatible with those of an autonomous society, such as collaboration, creation and community-building in opposition to the instrumental and utilitarian character of societies linked to individual interest, consumption and sovereignty. Autonomy is a condition of true coexistence, which entails the value of ‘positive sociability’, a form of sociability based on the active participation of all through the formation of new networks of communication with others. (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 18–26, 38–40). A social intersubjective relationship, which unfolds because of its collective dimension: “whoever wishes to be free must be interested in the freedom of others, must be interested in the collective dimension of politics” (Tovar-Restrepo, 2021, p. 62). Castoriadis suggests that we should approach culture and works of art as “new ways of socialization” and not as ornaments, and museums should be treated as public places of active participation and action and not as places of tourism and entertainment (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 15–17). Accordingly, architects can exercise autonomy and contribute to the creation of new shared spaces and foster community-building through the design of engaging cultural spaces.
The logic that orchestrates the ‘project of autonomy’ is the magmatic logic. ‘Magma’ refers to a multiplicity of representations, a condition between structure and non-structure, changeability and stability, identity and non-identity. ‘Magma’ is characterized by a kind of fluidity, a continuous state of change that is opposed to the solidification of identity. The magmatic logic suggests “a simultaneous way of being, which implies a different logic” (Curtis, 1997, pp. 290–319, 364) allowing for a multiplicity of elements, parts, meanings to transconnect and shape a new form. That being so, a context of indeterminacy and ambiguity arises, not allowing for a full definition (Tovar-Restrepo, 2020, pp. 92–93). The work of art, in this context of vagueness, does not represent reality, but creates a new one, what Castoriadis calls ‘a world’. Keeping a serious distance from teleological approaches, Castoriadis supports that the layers of creation are aesthetic appearances, that cannot exist separately, existing only through their interlinking. They are connected without being connected with any consistency and sequence, and its purpose (telos) is precisely the state of interlinking itself. Creation-as-multiplicity is characterized by an intermediate condition, which connects the ‘magmatic logic’ with the ‘ensembistic-identitarian’ logic that dominates the representational aspect of social reality. As a result, the disclosure of a new aesthetic world that can be considered political, in this manner, features a plural condition of being which connects chaos with order, non-meaning with meaning (Adams, 2011, p. 105).
The political dimension of art following Castoriadis’ theory lies in the critical awareness of the malleable qualities of society. Art can stimulate the transition to a more open, changeable, and participatory paradigm of politics centered on the exercise of questioning, imagining and thinking. Art and architectural practices connected to the ‘project of autonomy’ stand for a new relationship of the self with the self and the world, which can emerge by combining ‘reflection’ with the liberation of ‘radical imagination’, that is, the continuous circulation of representations of the unconscious, to articulate-visualize-design a critical thought-concern for politics and social reality with the form of new images-spaces. By proceeding to options that are not recognized as available options, artists and architects can distance themselves from heteronomy highlighting possibilities for creating the new (Curtis, 1997, p. 62).
The activity of ‘reflection’ vitalizes the transformation of the social individual to what Castoriadis calls ‘human subjectivity’, a quality that empowers probabilities of self-and-world recreation. Autonomous subject, Castoriadis specifies the subject that participates in the life of society claiming detachment and liberation from dominant structures, relations of power and subjugation (Castoriadis, 1992, p. 213). In such mode, the artist, but also the architect, as paradigms of autonomous subjects, can claim levels of freedom resisting heteronomy. Autonomy in praxis, is the reconsideration of hegemonic forms of established and ‘absolute’ truths, encouraging different ways of being, which contradict with the hitherto socialization and subject formation (Castoriadis, 2000, pp. 66, 24).
The ‘project of autonomy’ can be understood as a socio-historical rupture that rejects confinement and fuels creation: “it is a moment of creation”, and a desire for freedom: “If we want to be free, we must make our own laws. […] no one can dare to tell us what we should do and how we should think” (Castoriadis, 1978, p. 140). The heteronomous subject absorbed by the intensity of the social institution cannot realize their capacities to challenge and reform the social institutions, the meanings that motivate and determine their actions while remaining attached to a state of repetition and unconscious subjection. Heteronomy is approached as a condition of unfreedom that manipulates the individual towards specific choices (habits) that function as automatisms and passivate the subject in a non-overt way. In other words, heteronomy is where reasoning and imagining are undermined, and individuation becomes a rare act of disagreement (Castoriadis, 1991, pp. 132–133).
In order to analyze the process of transition from heteronomy to autonomy, Castoriadis draws from psychoanalytic theory, where autonomy is an ontological openness, a possibility of the subject to stand critically towards the power imposed by heteronomy and create “another self in another world” (Castoriadis, 1995, p. 410). The crucial point of this potentiality lies on ‘self-consciousness’ (Castoriadis, 1978, p. 153). To act politically is a conscious act towards the creation of a new world. The work of art as an act of autonomy indicates the activation and liberation of the ‘radical imagination’ within a state of clarity and political awareness. However, autonomy is not an end to which one arrives, being a political action that arises through the emergence of a joint network, where subjects engage actively towards a shared vision: the radical transformation of society. The example of the artist and that of the architect, can be versions of autonomous subjects, if their practices disrupt the everyday, question conventional approaches of functionality and normality that have been established, activating a different logic based on community-organization, imagination and self-consciousness.
2. The image of ‘absolute creation’: presenting chaos
Artistic and architectural practices that can be linked to the ‘project of autonomy’ have a political dimension, which can be understood through the relationship that the works develop simultaneously with the world and chaos. This, according to Castoriadis, can only be possible with “absolute creation”, the work of art which undertakes to present an unknown (until that moment) world (chaos) by imaging a new world (presenting chaos). The fact that Castoriadis uses the term “absolute” to describe the work of art which has a political dimension can be commented in connection to religion. “Absolute creation” is a “real presence”, which, unlike religion, reveals and does not conceal chaos (Castoriadis, 1978, pp. 97–101). Religion, unlike art, conceals chaos by delimiting it. The concept of chaos indicates the human inability to prove everything and its reinvigoration on a theoretical level expresses a distance from forms of ideology and theology (Castoriadis, 1978, p. 167). We could characterize Castoriadis’ decision to choose the term ‘absolute’ to define a democratic version of creation, provocative and paradoxical as well since it is the exact opposite of certainty and absoluteness. Through the work of art, the artist can question established certainties-truths by giving form to the abyss, which has been absorbed by the appeared-as-absolute-and-fixed social significations. According to Castoriadis, the artist begins to exist when the link between society and religion is either broken or radically changed: “This rupture, or change, is the rupture of institutionalized heteronomy, the beginning of questioning society itself and individuals themselves” (Castoriadis, 1978, p. 101).
The institutionalized social reality constitutes a well-organized world covered with meanings. Beneath all meaning there is non-meaning, or differently chaos; what remained outside the formative forces of the institution of society, or what can appear when society is subjected to alteration (“αλλοίωση”), that challenges of their given meanings. The political dimension of art lies in the revelation of chaos or non-meaning, which in this way is invested with meaning and acquires a new meaning: “the meaning of non-meaning” (Castoriadis, 1978, p. 99). In heteronomous societies, there is a tendency to invent meanings to organize and delimit chaos. Artists find ways to reveal chaos and challenge this silencing tendency by creating spaces that form and image chaos and function as “a passage and opening to the abyss” (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 137–142), which at the same time is an opening to a democratic autonomous society.
The work of art, therefore, presents dimensions of the world that have been lost or they are not visible on the everydayness of social life within heteronomy. The description or explanation of an “absolute” work of art is impossible for Castoriadis pointing out the impossibility of its translation to another language. The autonomy of the work of art lies, as well, in the formation of a meta-linguistic universe since language as a central element of the ‘ensembistic-identitarian’ logic is called into question through the ‘project autonomy’ (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 100–101, 143). The ‘absolute creation’ cannot be, thus, communicated (successfully) through language since “chaos lies beyond all meaning” (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 167), as it originates from the abyss of the human imaginary, a space of non-verbalized impulses and desires: “The significance in the highest moments of art is – and this is not a play with words – is the meaning of non-meaning and the non-meaning of meaning […] art as a window to the Abyss, to Chaos, and as the shaping of Abyss – this is precisely the moment of meaning, the moment, that is, when art creates a world” (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 156). The political significance of art is indicated in its abilities for world-formation within a context that challenges the logic of absolute identity and is beyond conventional approaches of understanding as it is deeply grounded on imagination, desire, and emotion: “It is not a rational thing, nor is it proven. It makes sense to us.” (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 169–170).
Discussing the artwork as ‘absolute creation’, we are shifting away from the logic of representation in art. Art emerges as a place of new possibilities, spaces and images beyond imitation (mimesis). The ‘absolute creation’ is creation ex nihilo that contains the past, without representing anything. The work of art creates another world using materials of the given world by mediating alterations. This critical function works towards the revelation of what the institution of society has concealed, chaos, the source and power of emergence (vis formandi) of the ‘absolute creation’, which reveals its truthful qualities and essence, what it really is (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 28–29). The artist as a paradigm of autonomous subject can introduce the spectators into a world they have not visited before. This disconnection from reality creates the necessary distance to enable speculation and cultivate a new culture of being infused by critical thinking and acting.
The image of art, to which I refer, serves as a critique to the logic of heteronomy and to that of representation. The politics of art in Castoriadis can be connected to practices that shape chaos by creating a new world: “Dance, architecture, and music do not imitate anything, they create a world” (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 138). Imitation is connected to reproduction and consumption and is approached as a “bad version of art” which cannot be connected to the constitution of a new world and the expression of emotions by limiting the gaze and thought to a familiar image. Art for Castoriadis is a living form, which produces meaning itself. Thus, the image of ‘absolute creation’ in art is a new living image and therefore not a representation, but a revelation-presentation: “Art presents without concealing” (Castoriadis, 2007, pp. 136, 29–30, 47).
3. From Cornelius Castoriadis’ theory to Laure Prouvost’s practice: Spatial and political dimensions of contemporary art
The political dimension of art is linked to a continuous practice of dialogue and critique; to question and create anew. The reference to a specific example of contemporary artistic practice will help at this point highlight the main axes of relational art and aesthetics in conversation with Castoriadis’ theorization on the work of art. The example will be the practice of the artist Laure Prouvost (b.1978, France), known for her immersive and multimedia installations that merge the real with the imaginary, engaging with architecture, contesting conventional perceptions of things, while animating new relationships between subjects-objects-spaces.
Entering a world created by Prouvost feels like entering a sensorial imaginary environment, where we can suddenly disconnect from the urban landscape, come together and re-imagine our relationship with the city, nature, technology, ourselves and the others. Prouvost designs spaces, videos and installations that ask you to stay there, to contemplate. In that way, she manages to differentiate herself visually and spatially while connecting with the spectators, welcoming them/us into her shared space of subjectivity, where one can become curious and fascinated by the immersive spatial qualities of her installations with sounds, sculptures, paintings, text, and moving images. Playing with words and storytelling, Prouvost is, sometimes, performing herself, with her voice and hands keeping our attention awake (she often likes to tell us tales). Having no tendencies for domination or control, she energizes a condition of equality between her and the spectators. The role of the subject of action shifts from the artist to the viewer and spectatorship becomes an active participation within a playful architecture for and of art. The exhibition-space transforms into a small community, an intellectual playground, where the viewers are agents of an alternative morphic universe, and they are invited to connect with other subjects and objects. Examining the boundaries between the personal and the public space, Prouvost addresses to an unknown audience a radically new and unknown world introducing her distinct architectural approach to art.
Refining the political dimension of ‘absolute creation’, Prouvost has stated that the political element in her work is found in the liberation of imagination and the questioning of the institutionalized world: “The most important element in my work is to challenge the way the world is institutionalized, to question the norms, to try to understand why we think in a certain way.” She believes that activism in art lies in being able to activate imagination or simply gather people in a common space and ask them to respond to questions concerning the construction of the world. Prouvost (2018) links the ability of questioning dominant norms that structure thought and action with a sense of liberation. And so, she constructs narrative and spatial spaces that integrate structures of everydayness into a fictional context.
At the Venice Biennale 2019, Prouvost drove us below the surface, creating a hole underneath the French Pavilion. ‘Digging’ seems to be a key feature of her practice: trying to get access to truths about the human, while looking for ‘an ideal elsewhere’. Reflecting on her videos I can remember hearing her voice, whispering, breathing. I could see images changing with an incredibly fast rhythm, a visualization of an unconscious magma presenting images between chaos and reality. Her images do not follow a linear logic; the images are connected without being connected and in this way, we are detecting bridges with Castoriadis’ ‘radical imagination’ and the way the autonomous subject critically relates to it. Beyond the visual images, Prouvost undertakes the creation of sound images by developing non-narratives that are driving us deep into a dark place inside us or outside us somewhere under or over the sea that is beyond architecture and reality. In her work “Swallow” (2013) she is calling us to “collect all these images and swallow all these images.”
Prouvost’s performative practice functions as “the transgression of boundaries, the joy of slipping over a fence and discovering a wasteland or an abandoned but wonderful garden in which the artist has discovered a forgotten dystopian biological laboratory”. Designing temporary communities that exist now and will never exist again, the spectators leave, others come, the audience changes and the space transforms each time, every day until the show is over. The dimension of mobility is characteristic in the body of her work, which most of the times is not limited to one space, following routes from space to space. Mobility as a key feature of the architectural design of contemporary art produces relational art and as a result, an unpredictable way of sociality. This participatory dimension that arises, encourages the practice of autonomy as artists and spectators constitute a new shared world (Bourriaud, 2014, pp. 62, 65). This is a quality which would not be possible unless there was a strong interrelation with architecture. Creating such immersive sensorial works can refine the significance of site-specificity and architecture in the field of art.
The work of art, under this spell, is not just an object, but a political action, which can invigorate a regime of equality between artists and spectators. Artists as political subjects can design new common worlds, where the real is questioned, rethought and recreated. This sui generis dimension of autonomy as political practice, for Castoriadis, is also activated the moment of spectatorship, when one “has no need of anything else”. To experience art (the paradigm of ‘absolute creation’) means, according to Castoriadis, “the end of desire”, a condition which can be considered ‘freedom in praxis’. Art can be associated with the exercise of freedom, world-and-community-making mediating the identity of architecture, the self and society. The absence of an evident meaning is a dimension of freedom that animates a culture of action, which challenges the hegemonic logic, the concept of ownership, and individualism, while challenging the distance between artists and spectators. (Bourriaud, 2014, pp. 14–15).
Contemporary art appears as an interlinking between art and architecture, artists and spectators through which new joint spaces are being produced, subjects are being interconnected with objects, subjects, spaces and autonomy is being practiced facilitating the realization of social change on all levels. Spaces of art are being transformed to spaces of dialogue and participation, where one can claim levels of differentiation and connection with the multitude. Following Prouvost’s critical and spatial practice, we can say that contemporary artists can suggest their very own architectures today bringing into existence their personal imaginary depths that are becoming inter-and-trans-personal in sharing-spaces. The dimension of the political emerges through the creation of common spaces, where the norms and meanings of the institutionalized world are being mediated with thought and imagination cultivating new relationships with the abyss of the ‘radical imaginary’. As a result, a new collective horizon of emancipation is being formed by artists, like Laure Prouvost, that are digging holes to uncover meanings, rediscover truths empowering an architectural approach grounded on togetherness, equality and contestation.