Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Band 57. Heft 2

My contribution begins with the observation that aesthetics has been conceived since Baumgarten on the basis of experimental procedures. Rather than, in the veine of Fechner’s works, taking the experimental methods of the natural sciences as a measure for the »science of sensual knowledge and representation« (Baumgarten) or for the working on the limits of sense, I try to analyze more attentively the genuine forms of aesthetical experimentation. With Adorno, one can differentiate between three historical phases of aesthetic experimentation. Lyotard claims that philosophy today should become experimental, following an experimentalization in the arts. But how could aesthetic experiments prepare the grounds for artistic developments?

Our paper deals with the work of André Malraux on the illustrations for his Musée imaginaire from the point of view of visual and cognitive experimentation. This work is explicitly inspired by the Benjamin of the »technical reproducibility« and the »author as producer.« We examine the opening of the imaginary field, as it is suggested by the praxis of the art book – an album of images that is supported by a certain kind of expressivity of framing, illumination and montage – in Malraux. Through this praxis of montage, Malraux constructs the authority of his visual style and the closure of the literary field. Above all, however, we discuss critically the anti-historical and anti-political destiny of his aesthetics, which in the end is quite far from Benjamin’s, and we conclude with a comparison between two contemporary artworks, namely Malraux’ Le Musee imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale and Les Statues meurent aussi, a film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais.

The paper discusses the relation of experiment and aesthetics starting from two recent artistic experiences: the exhibition SOMA by Carsten Höller, shown at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in winter 2010/11, and an extracted clip of the performance Dark Matter by Kate McIntosh. Both works put up for discussion the experiment in the context of the arts and at the same time, lead to the multiplication of its meaning. SOMA provides ›games of seeing‹ testing the aesthetic character of an experiment’s architecture and the ›mise-en-scène‹ of different situations of observation. Dark Matter plays upon scientific orders of presentation dragging the spectator’s attention to the dramaturgy of the experiment, which makes space for a new methods of mobilization or correlation.

What Samuel Beckett did in art seems to be far away from what Hans-Jörg Rheinberger did in the history of science. Surprisingly enough both share a fascination for a quite special grammatical form: the future perfect. Using the future perfect touches upon Freud’s tricky notion of deferred action (»Nachträglichkeit«). A certain skepticism concerning the structure of a series is implied whenever an observer tries to look back at what he/she is still doing – for instance living (Beckett) or experimenting (Rheinberger). In all these cases it is principally impossible to know if a certain series is finished or is still going on. It may be a typical problem of Beckett’s; but Rheinberger has raised it for writing history of science. The conclusion is simple: »In the end« the history of science will have taken the appearance of a Beckett story.

The article tries to defend three theses: First the opinion that in fact philosophical and empirical aesthetics can be clearly distinguished and as well juxtaposed, but the term experimental aesthetics should not only be reserved for aesthetics, which can be found outside of philosophy. Because notably phenomenological aesthetics, so the second thesis, are in a certain way experimental aesthetics – namely if and only if the method of Eidetic Variation is used and insofar this method can be understood as a form of a mental self-experiment. Since this method is not only used in phenomenological philosophy, thirdly the opinion should be defended that there is a long tradition of experimental aesthetics in philosophy taken as a whole and e.g. Kant’s transcendental aesthetic is an epitome of such kind, because it bases its claim for knowledge neither inductively nor deductively, but using the experiment of an Eidetic Variation.

Are works of art to be conceived as thought experiments? To answer this question one has to explain what thought experiments are. I argue that thought experiments consist of contrafactual scenarios which are conceptually articulated, whereby the scenarios in question are developed in a concise way. In the case of works of art this is not so. If works of art consist of contrafactual scenarios these scenarios are not developed concisely, even if works of art present a constellation of just a few elements. The reason for this is that each work of art establishes a specific language. Such a language cannot be simply grasped, like a scenario in a thought experiment – it has to be followed mimetically by the recipients. So works of art function differently from thought experiments and are – even though closely related – not to be conceived as thought experiments.

In recent years, it has become rather popular to rely on the results of empirical studies in trying to answer some of the traditional questions in philosophical aesthetics, such as the one concerning the nature and justification of aesthetic evaluation. In opposition to this very empiricist approach, I would like to put forward a more rationalist picture of the aesthetic experience and evaluation of artworks. More specifically, I aim to critically discuss the aesthetic relevance of three kinds of empirical studies: of those that examine particular artworks by means of scientific or historical investigations; of those that use the empirical methods of psychology and sociology in order to examine our aesthetic evaluations of single works or groups of work; and finally of those that scrutinize our general faculty for aesthetic judgement by means of the cognitive sciences.

The analysis of aesthetic phenomena using scientific methods sometimes conceals the difficulties of experimental aesthetics. In the study with Bill Viola’s videoinstallation The Greeting, the discrepancy of theoretical claim and experimental reality takes shape exemplarily. The ambitious aim of dissecting the (emotional-aesthetic) perception of The Greeting follows the standards of experimental/empirical research. The data, however, offers not only confirming correlations, but also unexpected findings and interpretive impasses that force a revision of the thesis. With a retrospective view on the completed experiment, the suspicion is confirmed that proving aesthetic experience with the means of the natural sciences is informative, but also limited.

The contribution explores Lars von Triers meta-filmic comedy The Boss of it all, starting from Jean Francois Lyotard’s reflections on the experiment in art and philosophy, and following the lines of Stanley Cavell’s assumptions on »genre as medium« and on comedy as reflexive form of film genre. The Boss of it all unfolds the experimental character of genre film, fi lm genre, and comedy. The fi lm presents itself as a paradoxical experimental object, detaching itself from its author, from genre rules and spectator’s expectations. It acquires an independent status of action and reflection, and precisely by this looks at itself as a product of the orderings which it puts into question. This is described here under the aspect of ontology as well as in terms of action theory with the help of the concept of the agent.

Nowadays artists and curators increasingly stress terms like ›laboratory‹ and ›research‹ when describing their studio practice or their exhibition space. The contribution argues that this semantic change articulates a striking shift in the understanding of artistic production and authorship. When the studio – traditionally seen as a place where the individual is committed to his or her world-directedness – is described as a laboratory, another dispositive of knowledge production comes into play. This dispositive seems, I would argue, different from the concept of the studio in four respects: Firstly, it refers to the scientific field and its institutions. Secondly, the laboratory-dispositive promises to be more open to collective labour, thirdly, the laboratory relates to different models of labour and production that claim another stake within the knowledge society, and, fourthly, the distinction between production and reception becomes watered down. These changes, at least, run the risk of downplaying the brisance of artistic subjectivity.

In the spring of 2008, the artist Georg Schneider announced an art performance with a mortally ill person. Most of the responses to this art project were very critical. While the artist argued that the exhibition of a dying person should be understood as a humanistic intervention against the social taboo of death, commentators often criticized the exhibition as voyeuristic. Based on this discussion, the article explores what it means to stage a dying person as a piece of art and investigates the historical conditions of this project by locating the longing for ethic and aesthetic self-determination within the humanistic tradition of the modern concept of the work of art.