Here follows an excerpt from “The politics of esthetics: the distribution of the sensible” by Jacques Ranciere, my favorite view on politics and art (we can read the book together, it’s great!):
"Political statements and literary locutions produce effects in reality. They define models of speech or action but also regimes of sensible intensity. They draft maps of the visible, and the sayable, relationships between modes of being, modes of saying, and modes of doing and making. They define variations of sensible intensities, perceptions, and the abilities of bodies. They thereby take hold of unspecified groups of people, they widen gaps, open up space for deviations, modify the speech, the trajectories, and the ways in which groups of people adhere to a condition, react to situations, recognize their images. They reconfigure the map of the sensible by interfering with the functionality of gestures and rhythms adapted to the natural cycles of production, reproduction and submission. Man is a political animal because he is a literary animal who lets himself be diverted from his ‘natural’ purpose by the power of words.”
Another author that can be interesting to read is Brian Holmes. He is an art and cultural critic, activist,.., interested primarily in the intersections of artistic and political practices.(I just saw a lecture by him in IMAL some months ago and he is a passionate person). I will search for an article to bring to the discussion.)
