Papers by Josefine Wikstrom
Nordic Journal of Aesthetics , 2024
The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Jul 3, 2022
Frieze: Contemporary Art and Culture, 2014
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The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 2023
What is the relationship between the philosophical concept of the “autonomy of art” and the cultu... more What is the relationship between the philosophical concept of the “autonomy of art” and the cultural policy-notion of “artistic freedom”? This article seeks to answer this question by taking the Swedish governmental report This Is How Free Art Is (Så fri är konsten 2021) and its reception in the Swedish main stream media as an emblematic example and by reading it symptomatically. Firstly, it traces the critical history of “artistic freedom” and the interrelated term “arm’s length distance”, primarily in the context of Great Britain. Secondly, it critically reconstructs the concept of the “autonomy of art” in the history of Western philosophy by making a critique of a fetishized notion of art’s autonomy in the name of l’art pour l’art. The main argument is that the idea about art’s autonomy, on which the Swedish report leans, resembles such philosophical and art historical idea of art’s autonomy. The claim is also that such an understanding of art does not tie up, either philosophically or historically, with the arm’s length principle, since they ultimately rely on different conceptions of art’s freedom.
Kultur&Klasse , 2023
In this article, we suggest that the notion of ”aesthetic cultures of protest” can be understood ... more In this article, we suggest that the notion of ”aesthetic cultures of protest” can be understood as designating two broad tendencies in the contemporary field of art and politics: on the one hand, the incorporation of the protest by the art world and, on the other hand, the appropriation of aesthetic traits by social protests. To counteract the ethical immediacy of both, we turn to Theodor W. Adorno’s more dialectical understanding of the relationship between protests and the aesthetic. After being marshalled against art’s internalisation of protest and the protests appropriation of the aesthetic, we assess Adorno’s notion of form and autonomy through an immanent critique that is both conceptual and historical. We argue that Adorno’s aesthetics lacks an understanding of social labour, to which it itself ascribes great conceptual significance, and that recent changes in the global composition of capital and labour has affected the role of social labour in such a way that Adorno’s tendency to identify art’s autonomy with its negativity can no longer be upheld. Finally, we argue that the characteristics, which Adorno ascribes to the work of art has migrated to, and realised by, a form of protest which reemerged simoultaneously with the death of Adorno, namely the riot.
Radical Philosophy , 2023
Paletten Art Journal , 2020
Routledge , 2021
In this study, Josefine Wikström challenges a concept of performance that makes no difference bet... more In this study, Josefine Wikström challenges a concept of performance that makes no difference between art and non-art and argues for a new concept. This book confronts and criticises the way in which the dominating concept of performance has been used in art theory and performance and dance studies. Through an analysis of 1960s performance practices, Wikström focuses specifically on task-dance and event-score practices and provides an examination of the key philosophical concepts that are inseparable from such a concept of art and are necessary for the reconstruction of a critical concept of performance, such as "practice", "experience", "object", "abstraction" and "structure". This book will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners across dance, performance art, aesthetics and art theory. Josefine Wikström is Associate Professor of Dance Theory at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Critical Theory: Past, Present Future , 2021
A paper written for the conference Adorno and the Anthropocene in 2017 and now published as a cha... more A paper written for the conference Adorno and the Anthropocene in 2017 and now published as a chapter in a book published by Södertörn Philosophical Studies, Stockholm: 2021.
PARSE Journal , 2019
Art’s primary function, at least for a certain tradition of thinking, is to criticize capitalist ... more Art’s primary function, at least for a certain tradition of thinking, is to criticize capitalist society. But what in capitalism should be criticized? And how can art perform such a critique? Taking these questions as its staring point this article argues for three things mainly. First, by expanding on Frankfurt School thinker Theodor Adorno’s form theory, that art primarily should criticize capitalism through its form, understood as “sedimented content.” Secondly, taking Marx’s term abstract labour and the way it has been further theorized by contemporary thinkers such as Moishe Postone and Chris Arthur, that abstract labour is the main mediating social form of capitalism and therefore should be the main focus for critique. Finally that art can only negate the social form of abstract labour though its own form. These arguments are being discussed through American choreographer Yvonne Rainer’s (1934-) work, which can be categorised as “task-dance”, an artistic strategy that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by choreographers Anna Halprin, Simone Forti and Rainer. Through Adorno’s understanding of form, I argue that Rainer’s early task-dance works criticise capitalism at the level of form rather than at the level of representation.
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Koreografi EDITORS Solveig Styve Holte Ann-Christin Berg Kongsness Runa Borch Skolseg
Dance your abstraction
TkH (Walking Theory) Published in collaboration with nstitute for Applied Theatre Science, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, 2016
Essay included in the publication Post-dance edited by Mette Edvardsen, Mårten Spångberg and Danjel Andersson. , 2017
Performance Research Journal , 2012
Sarma Docs: Laboratory for discursive practices and expanded publication , 2016
Mute , 2015
Whilst left critiques habitually relate art to capitalist commodification, few do this on strictl... more Whilst left critiques habitually relate art to capitalist commodification, few do this on strictly economic grounds, let alone cogently. Josefine Wikström argues that finally we do have a book that fulfills exactly this task
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Papers by Josefine Wikstrom
Questioning the privileged status of the object in feminist discourse, Nina Power makes a case for a feminism of the void. Hannah Proctor writes about the ideologies that have animated the objects Charlotte Corday’s skull and Ulrike Meinhof’s brain, and with this opens out a perspective on the historically constructed nature of gender. Maija Timonen uses the head transplant as a metaphor for the rise of the populist right, a travesty of the social body living in a state of incomplete ecstasy. Cara Tolmie’s performance transcript takes fragments of songs and uses them as conduits for a discussion on community and healing. Lizzie Homersham writes about hearts, objectification of emotions and homesickness. Hannah Black has written a poem about three men and an untold number of women. Josefine Wikström critiques Object Oriented Ontology, exploring how feminist art practices could provide a counterpoint to it. Rose-Anne Gush analyses Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Liebhaberinnen, arguing that Jelinek’s brutal and object-like language serves to denaturalise and challenge the “fated” appearance of the life stories of the book’s protagonists.
Questioning the privileged status of the object in feminist discourse, Nina Power makes a case for a feminism of the void. Hannah Proctor writes about the ideologies that have animated the objects Charlotte Corday’s skull and Ulrike Meinhof’s brain, and with this opens out a perspective on the historically constructed nature of gender. Maija Timonen uses the head transplant as a metaphor for the rise of the populist right, a travesty of the social body living in a state of incomplete ecstasy. Cara Tolmie’s performance transcript takes fragments of songs and uses them as conduits for a discussion on community and healing. Lizzie Homersham writes about hearts, objectification of emotions and homesickness. Hannah Black has written a poem about three men and an untold number of women. Josefine Wikström critiques Object Oriented Ontology, exploring how feminist art practices could provide a counterpoint to it. Rose-Anne Gush analyses Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Liebhaberinnen, arguing that Jelinek’s brutal and object-like language serves to denaturalise and challenge the “fated” appearance of the life stories of the book’s protagonists.