Historically – according to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek – ‘interesting times’ can be considered periods of unrest, war and power struggles, with their consequences being borne by millions of innocent victims. Today, the world seems to be going through interesting times again with all the tensions and insecurities that abound.

How to act? As victim, as perpetrator? Apathetic or on the contrary revolutionary? How does an artist imagine when traditional answers are no longer sufficient?
art offers the imagination and can serve as ‘a hammer to shape reality’ (Bertolt Brecht). Shaking up its environment, giving it a ‘voice’, redefining, fusing or engaging inside and outside the art world. Artists thinking of alternatives, not avoiding 
the points of pain in current events, and initiating dialogues on societal and political issues which could resemble methods and forms of art and activism.

'how to act? 'Interesting times'

words

transgressive
/tranzˈɡrɛsɪv,trɑːnz-,-ns- adj.
involving a violation of moral or social boundaries.
"her experiences of transgressive love with both sexes"
to go beyond the limits imposed by (a law, command, etc.); violate; infringe: to transgress the will of God.

Laissez-faire, (French: “allow to do”), policy of minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society.

reformer
a person who makes changes to something in order to improve it.

Belonging is an essential human need. (Fascists understand this basic fact; neoliberals don’t.) Loneliness, it turns out, negatively affects not only our psychological well-being, but also our physical health. And yet we have apparently chosen, via liberal democracy, to live according to a system of social organization that requires us to be jumpy paranoids, suspicious of everyone and terrified of our own potential mistakes.

But here’s the truly wonderful thing about neoliberalism—as it turns us all into paranoid, jealous schemers, it offers to sell us bromides to ameliorate the very bad feelings of self-doubt and alienation it conjures in our dark nights of the soul.

Feeling blue? Why not scroll through some non-challenging four-line poems and a pleasing table setting?

Anxiety, and especially depression, as the late social critic Mark Fisher noted, often have social causes, but we are led to believe that we suffer individually and must struggle alone. Against this hyper-individualist vision of psychic healing, we do well to highlight Fisher’s core insight that the tools we are given skew how we understand the world and our place in it. Language, typically the most essential method by which we articulate our affective life, can be a most insidious means of our own oppression if co-opted by those who would exploit us.

“do what you love” and “live your best life.” Both aphorisms imply that what we’re currently doing is not enough.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/tell-me-its-going-to-be-ok-tokumitsu

prayanama

prayanama

STRUCTURALISME
Ferdinand de Saussure legde de fundamenten voor het structuralisme in zijn semiotiek.
Het structuralisme is een theoretische benaderingswijze en intellectuele stroming binnen de sociale wetenschappen en hedendaagse filosofie die haar bloeitijd in de jaren zestig en zeventig van de twintigste eeuw kende. Men moet het echter niet zien als een uniforme stroming, maar als een groep filosofen en sociologen die een gemeenschappelijk vertrekpunt hebben: er zijn niet direct waarneembare of onbewuste structuren die ten grondslag liggen aan (alle) sociale verschijnselen. Deze structuren zijn verzamelingen van de relaties tussen de elementen waaruit de sociale werkelijkheid is opgebouwd. Het is dus een verzamelnaam voor een aantal interdisciplinaire methodes en onderzoeksprogramma's die stellen dat er uitgebreide onbewust functionerende culturele symboolsystemen zijn die het alledaagse in grote mate bepalen, en die deze dan ook willen onderzoeken.[1][2]