Artistic Practices and Philosophical Practices: Family Similarities and In-Between Experiences
Piero Castellano
The paper revolves around the relationship between philosophical practices and artistic practices, investigated from a variety of perspectives that exclude an essentialist view, in an attempt to find the existing “family resemblances” between the two. The movements of deconstruction and self-problematization in place in both the areas of art and philosophy converge towards a common tendency to transcend their aesthetic and theoretical boundaries. This tendency clearly manifests itself in their incessant need for a re-identification or re-transcription. Together, philosophical and artistic practices are building a new scenario in which they overcome their own traditional fields. Both in art and philosophy, conceived as performance exercises in constant metamorphosis, plurality and difference are constantly practised, and other possible worlds are constantly devised. As minor practices that do not aspire to any epistemological foundation, they embrace an in-between form of thought, and rework the traditional relationship between “author” and “public”. As experiences that essentially question the status quo, these practices also affect the political dimension and – more generally – the field of knowledge, by working both for the democratic transformation of society and for the opening of new opportunities in terms of connections between art and knowledge. In this regard, in the final part of the paper, I endeavour to reconsider the relationship between artistic and philosophical practices through the symbolic forms existing in different cultures, thereby showing that the re-configuration of the link between artwork, thought, and life allows us to understand the movement that gives new meaning to art and philosophy as life-forms.
Keywords: Artistic Practice, Philosophical Practice, In-between Thought, Deconstruction, Life-forms
4. P.O.I - Hegel, la storia e noi-Castellano