Elena Tavani

Both Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno consider ‘aesthetical experience’ as an “image experience” assuming a power of images “to set free forces” directed to produce or support aesthetical-political (Benjamin) or aesthetical-critical (Adorno) requirements. Profane illumination, ‘thinkimages’, phantasmagory, dialectical images, decayed ‘aura’ and technicalized images in Benjamin’s theory of aesthetical modernity. Expressive feature or “mimetic” eloquence in nature and art countering reality, dismantled ‘aura’ in contemporary desacralized work of art, but also persisting ‘aura’ in its meaningful dimension in Adorno’s aesthetical theory.

The article is an investigation into theatricality from various standpoints (among others those of Michael Fried, Claire Bishop, Juliane Rebentisch and Samuel Weber) in order to focus on different views on theatricality considered as partially emancipated from theatre and to verify if and to what extent each of them can apply to installation artworks as environments and intermedial devices. Ultimately the article propounds the idea of a paradoxical anti-theatrical theatricality of installation art, grasped in its very connection to site-specificity, critically engaging Martin Heidegger’s insights regarding the «Gestell» and the «work-being» of the work of art, as a general theoretical basis through which a particular focus of ‘specificity’ of installation is endorsed.

The article is an investigation into theatricality from various standpoints in order to focus on different views on theatricality considered as partially emancipated from theatre and to verify if and to what extent each of them can apply to installation artworks as environments and intermedial devices. Ultimately the article propounds the idea of a paradoxical anti-theatrical theatricality of installation art, grasped in its very connection to site-specificity, critically engaging Martin Heidegger’s insights regarding the «Gestell» and the «work-being» of the work of art, as a general theoretical basis through which a particular focus of ‘specificity’ of installation is endorsed.

Starting from a specific critique of the traditional «metaphysical mistake» (to take apart being and appearing), Hannah Arendt points out the necessity to support a radical “phenomenalism”, which can be able to become politically relevant through 'spectacularity'. Far from the task of replacing an unknown being or substance, in Arendt's view all appearances are phenomena enhancing a singular exhibition on the 'world stage' in order to communicate an opinion or to perform deeds. Along this path, the encounter with Merleau-Ponty’s thought occurs at several levels. Specifically, the thesis of the ‘spectacular’ character of the world reveals itself in Arendt’s political theory as intimately linked to the thesis of an aesthetic and, at the same time ontological basis of experience, where opinion 'opens' to determined 'portions' of being. Such features of Arendt's political theory join it to Merleau-Ponty's theory of vision as “conditioned thought ” (by the world), “which advents” as “instituted” in a singular proper-body (Eye and Mind). According to Arendt, thought itself has to be considered not only as invisible (The Life of the Mind), but as a visible “doxa”, showing specific “aspects of world”, also revealed as specific positions to take and to defend in public. The paper suggests that the theoretical encounter of the two philosophers is a valuable asset in the context of contemporary political “publicity”.