Inertie hoort bij Kunst als de Dood bij het Leven

In this article I propose to understand inertia in art as a “disposition to meaning”. I compare inertia in art with that of a face of a person recently deceased. To acquaintances, i.e. to family and friends, it holds a promise of memories (of the deceased); to all the others the corpse offers the possibility of a projection of meanings.
Art is made of plain, or extra-ordinary stuff, which is turned into artistic material. The artist is to bring the inert potency of stuff to artistic life, and to turn it into something that is expressive. If she is successful, then the work will offer its audience a concentrated, absorbing experience. Art is autonomous in that the aimed for experience is morally neutral.
In the view of many contemporary artists, such experiences fail art’s deeper significance: absorbing experiences are, simply, too easy. If artists want to really move the audience (to emotion), or so they feel, they should also move the audience into action. Wanting to achieve this is not just difficult; it is a paradox.
In general, the material that works are made of has a sociohistorical dimension, with which the audience always already is engaged morally. Yet, in introducing it into art practice this moral engagement has been detached from the audience’s attitude. They are not to storm the stage to rescue the heroin in distress—and it is like this in all the arts.
This is the paradox for the artist: she must work with meaningless inert material, turn it into something meaningful whilst bringing those meanings to life, so as to allow the audience an absorbing experience. That experience will never be straightforwardly characterised as moral because it starts from the detachment that is characteristic of art practice—its autonomy. The inertia must be championed but never so much as to make us act accordingly. Art can never really become the living thing that it longs so much to be.
“Inertie hoort bij Kunst. Als de dood bij het leven (over gelaatsexpressie als filosofisch model voor kunst)”, Inertia. Perseverance in art. St. Petersburgh, 24-26 September 2006.
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