Intersubjectivity is a collection of writings on the presence of
language in the visual arts: the first volume makes a case in favor of
concretism in contemporary artistic practices.
Intersubjectivity, a two-volume collection of essays, is concerned with a new account of our ideas of what subjects are, and what is means for them to meet. The project explores these concepts in the context of the interaction of non-sentient beings, attempting to move beyond anthropomorphic theories of objectivity and materiality, as well as subjects whose boundaries resist definition.
Intersubjectivity takes up the complementary problems of nondiscursive language and nonlinguistic discourse, in an attempt to locate the distinctions and respective abilities of philosophy as a particular kind of art and art as a particular kind of philosophy.
The first volume,
Language and Misunderstanding, addresses concretism and its discontents. The essays and performance texts herein argue for an expanded consideration of concretism in contemporary practices oriented toward the embodiment of language, in works that challenge the privileging of the body of the word over the body of the artist. Thus
Cory Arcangel,
Fia Backström,
Erica Baum, Paul Chan,
Jimmie Durham, and
Hito Steyerl all contribute works that in different ways insist on the somatic nature of writing; Andrew Durbin, and Ariane Müller, and Vincent Romagny address the drift of meaning across material; Lucy Ives, Daniel Grúň, and the Young Girl Reading Group are skeptical of dogmas of authorship and identity; Alain Badiou asks when modern art will end; and Abraham Adams polemicizes against the loss of the body in the concrete work. With an introduction by Lou Cantor.
