Espaço Aparência, Desacordo E Práticas Artísticas: Estudo Da Utilização De `Arquivo.

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between some of the contemporary artistic practices and the concept of public appearance. To understand public appearance we take advantage of the theoretical apparatus developed by Hannah Arendt. Among the theoretical components used by Arendt to support her conceptualization of public appearance, we are mainly interested in the concepts of visibility and permanence. To also take into consideration the aesthetic dimension of political space, we examine the concepts of dissensus and equality as put forth by Jacques Rancière. We argue that public appearance, visibility and permanence, as well as dissensus, are are the object of analysis of the artistic practices selected for this research. Our guiding question is to understand how the artistic practices of Allan Sekula, Walid Radd and Antoni Muntadas provide inputs to discuss the key concepts that grounds public appearance. The research starts from the relation between the bodies of work of the selected artists and the 'archive'. The archive considered as an institution that produces the common. Our hypothesis, synoptically, is that these artistic practices, through dissensus operations, introduce in public appearance 'minor' regimes of visibility and permanence.We will address how, with different artistic operations, the three artists criticize the prevailing visibility and permanence regimes while, on another side, opening their work to another, 'minor', concept of visibility and permanence. It will be explored the concept of "un-archival" within some of the Alan Sekula series, the ficcional dimension of an "over-archive" on the work of Walid Raad, and, finally, the deconstruction of the media archive by Antoni Muntadas.