The disruptive aesthetics of hijacking urban space

• Main Author: Thomas Markussen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2012-06-01
• Series: Journal of Aesthetics & Culture
• Subjects: disruptive aesthetics; affect; détournement; the emancipatory effects of urban interventions
• Online Access: http://www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/18157/22782

The aim of this paper is above all to provide a more adequate understanding of practices of hijacking urban space as they are exploited in today's art interventions. It is common to trace such practices back to practices of art production that were introduced as early as the 1960s by the Situationists. However, in order to get a clearer understanding of what is peculiar to current interventionist practices, I will argue that we need to shift the focus of attention from this art historian genealogy toward the intervention itself. The techniques used in art interventions today may thus be the same, or at least similar, to those of the avant-garde, but the aesthetic effects achieved by exploiting them are different. In this paper, I will show how a signaletic non-representational approach is central for understanding these aesthetic effects and how they differ from similar practices used by the Situationists and in critical art.