23.02.2010, 20:00 h

The Agent of Displacement
The Artist as the Perfect Dilettante: Not Knowing How to Do Anything, Potentially Doing Whatever

The artist is the social figure who defines his own work in the intermediate space between disciplines, crossing over or invading different fields.
In some case he is the one who can put together different specialists, at times creating a situation where each one of them can see his own field according to an extra-disciplinary, or even „non functional", logic.
The artist is the social figure who doesn't-know-how-to-do-anything: if he is not an „expert" in any specific skill, he will have a lesser tendency to (or temptation to) fall into bravura, in the hypnosis of special effects and in the flexing of technological muscles.
The contemporary artist is the perfect dilettante: he or she who doesn't-know-how-to-do-anything, but who takes the credit for the potential to do whatever, crossing over various disciplines, making specialists work in unusual ways, and using technologies instrumentally.
The action terrain of this perfect dilettante isn't proscribed to a certain territory or to a given space; instead it is defined by a vector component, by a movement between one space and another. His field of action - in effect more an action than a field - can be defined as displacement.

Cesare Pietroiusti (Roma, artist) has published Non-functional Thoughts (1978-1996) and has founded Evolution de l'Art, the first gallery that deals only with immaterial artworks. He is currently teacher at the IUAV in Venice.

Language of the lecture
English

Location
Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst e.V.
Oranienstraße 25
D-10999 Berlin
+49 (0)30 616 513-0
office [at] ngbk.de
www.ngbk.de