Alana Jelinek: Between Discipline and a Hard Place

10/02/21 • 54 min

Between Discipline and a Hard Place
The Value of Contemporary Art

Alana Jelinek

Published by Bloomsbury, 2020
ISBN 9781350100473

Some fields have an easier time describing themselves than others. “History is the study of past events.” “Biology is the study of living organisms.” But art? Is art a discipline? Is it a practice? Who gets to answer this most fundamental of questions, and why do we prefer not to try? Between Discipline and a Hard Place, written from the perspective of a practising artist, proposes that, against a groundswell of historians, museums and commentators claiming to speak on behalf of art, it is artists alone who may define what art really is.

Between Discipline and a Hard Place is a passionate treatise arguing for a new way of understanding art that forefronts the role of the artist and the importance of inclusion within both the concept of art and the art world.

Alana Jelinek speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about a disciplined and disciplinary approach to thinking about art and its value outside the current preoccupation with economic considerations and the great potential of interdisciplinary working.

Alana Jelinek is an artist and a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire.

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Between Discipline and a Hard Place
The Value of Contemporary Art

Alana Jelinek

Published by Bloomsbury, 2020
ISBN 9781350100473

Alana Jelinek is an artist and a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire.

*************

Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/

You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/

Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/

Previous Episode

Hannah Wohl: Bound by Creativity

Bound by Creativity
How Contemporary Art is Created and Judged

Hannah Wohl

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2021
ISBN 9780226784694

What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is profoundly influenced by social interactions even when artists work alone.

Hannah Wohl speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about Bound by Creativity, her ethnographic study of the New York contemporary art scene that reveals how artists develop conceptions of their distinctive creative visions through experimentation and social interactions and how aesthetic judgment evolves between artist studios, galleries, art fairs, and collectors’ houses.

We mention Paula Cooper Gallery and the work of artists Lucky DeBellevue and Gina Beavers. The Armory Show takes place in NY in early September 2021.

Hannah Wohl is an assistant professor in sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/

You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/

Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/

Next Episode

Fuller, Weizman: Investigative Aesthetics

Investigative Aesthetics
Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth

Matthew Fuller
Eyal Weizman

Published by Verso, 2021
ISBN 9781788739085

Today, journalists, legal professionals, activists, and artists challenge the state’s monopoly on investigation and the production of narratives of truth. They probe corruption, human rights violations, environmental crimes, and technological domination. Organisations such as WikiLeaks, Bellingcat, or Forensic Architecture pore over open-source videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what Fuller and Weizman call ‘investigative aesthetics’: the mobilisation of sensibilities associated with art, architecture, and other such practices in order to challenge power.

Investigative Aesthetics draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology; evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art. These new practices take place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as they strive towards the construction of a new common sense.

Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman speak to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the logics behind Forensic Architecture and the evidentiary turn: the aesthetics of distributed sensing, the investigative commons, and the condition of hyperaesthesia.

Matthew Fuller is a Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Media Ecologies, and with Andrew Goffey, Evil Media.

Eyal Weizman is the founder and director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Hollow Land, The Least of All Possible Evils, and Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability.