Inaugural lectures
Wednesday May 12, 2010 at 5.00pm - Lecture theatre CC.0.11, James France Building
Art Matters
Professor Marsha Meskimmon, School of Art and Design
Art matters; it makes and means in and through materials. Art’s agency is intrinsically connected to its materiality and moves beyond the mere representation of a pre-given reality. Art does not simply reflect society, culture, history or politics, it materialises the very parameters through which these are formed in intersubjective negotiations within the world.
Art matters, not for any measurable economic, cultural or social impact it may have, but precisely because of its contingency, its ability to materialise the new and enable difference to be articulated, rather than collapsed into homogeneity.
Art is not synonymous with legislative force and it cannot oblige us to act; its register is affective, not prescriptive. But this does not reduce its power to produce qualitative changes in subjectivity, the very changes that reside at the core of ethical and political agency in the most profound sense. Art matters.