A cena crítica: pensar com obras quebradas

Abstract

This thesis proposes the notion of critical scene to account for a dimension of contemporary art that consists of articulating criticism in two simultaneous ways: one directed at society and the other that internally animates the structures of the works. Broken works, as we propose, are analyzed as moments of problematic aesthetic events that contain crisis within themselves. Thinking with these works, as the subtitle articulates, means recognizing that within them the- re is an aesthetic thought that can confront hegemonic logics of the administered world. We insert ourselves into the current debate between politics, aesthetics, art, and criticism mainly through the path opened by the philosopher Jacques Rancière. To get to the heart of the epis- temological problems of art theory and to develop a vision of the structures of works capable of resisting dominant discourses, the historical and intimate relationship between Critical Theory and psychoanalysis is explored, respectively from Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Lacan. Here we find the concepts of fetish and fantasy, as well as the register of the real, as theorized by Lacan. In the development of the thesis, the aim is to think with four contempo- rary works through an immanent and event-based analysis. From each one, its main critical procedures are isolated and theorized, glimpsed in the constitution of the language articulated by each aesthetic event. These works are: Matadouro, by Demolition Incorporada; Iluminai os Terreiros, by Nuno Ramos; La Bête, by Wagner Schwartz; and Quaseilhas, by Diego Araúja and Plataforma Araká. In conclusion, these procedures are compared, questioning the critical relevance and effectiveness of each, as well as their functioning together within the specific historicity of these first decades of the 21st century.