CONCEPT
ANTIDOTE is a series of exhibitions/events of CRITICAL ART. Curated/directed by professor/artist Teemu Mäki and others from Aalto University and elsewhere. The participants from Aalto University are master's degree program students or alumni or Ph.D. students or professors / post-doc researchers / lecturers. And the non-Aalto participants can be anybody the ANTIDOTE team led by professor Mäki sees suitable.
CRITICAL...&...POLITICAL?
Political should here be understood as the equivalent of philosophically and politically active and critical. The proper term I usually use in teaching and in theoretical texts is CRITICAL ART. Which refers on one hand to thecritical theory of the Frankfurt School — the tradition ofTheodor Adorno (1903—1969) etc. — and on the other to Bertolt Brecht's (1898—1956) version of politically militant and questioning art. In addition to these two conflicting schools of thought and artistic practice I'm also referring to and finding nourishment from many other traditions which, as I do, see art as the most flexible, versatile and comprehensive form of philosophy and politics, as a philosophical/political activity that includes both the verbalizable and the non-verbalizable.
How can I claim art to be an important philosophical-political force and medium? The basic requirement is that first I have to see that my philosophical-political conviction is mainly a vision, a multisensory and subjactively interpreted holistic vision of how things are, how things could be and how I think/feel they should be — and that the rationally verbalized version this conviction is only a partial echo of the complete, full-bodied vision. After this, it makes sense to think of artworks not as an illustrations or marketing devices of rationally verbalized philosophy and politics, but vice versa: as attempts at testing and molding the philosophical and political conviction in their full form.
CRITICAL ART IN AALTO UNIVERSITY
The idea of art as a holistic form of critical thought is officially accepted in Aalto University's policy of education and research, but on the other hand this kind of art is the underdog or at least belongs to the minority in a university that was created as a merger of University of Art and Design, Helsinki School of Economics and Technical University. I see this as a good sparring ring: in Aalto art is constantly challenged by skeptical notions that require art to justify itself again and again: What's the point of philosophically/politically inclined art that's neither a part of "hard science / natural sciences" nor (usually) a part of economically profitable entrepreneurship either?
ANTIDOTE exhibitions and events try answer these skeptical questions by focusing on topics such as gender issues, globalization / global class society, immigration, racism, ecology, consumerism and so on — which I see clearly a issues and problems that can not be successfully dealt with mere hard science nor parliamentary political system either.
The artistic treatment is needed because many aspects of these themes can not be approached by the powers of pure reasoning only. "There is no ought from is.", as David Hume (1717—1776) put it in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739—1740). In other words, the most fundamental — often also the most practical — philosophical and political dilemmas, such as "What do I actually fear?, What do I actually want? How should I live?, Why should I keep on living? and What is good life?", are important, unavoidable and on the other hand without permanent and ahistorical answer. We propose art as the way of dealing with them.
Professor of Fine Arts (Doctor of Fine Arts)
Aalto University School of Art and Design
