The question of art’s ability to speak to that which is unknowable,
unspeakable and alien has been a long tradition held in Romanticism and Realism, the former being associated with the subjective
physiologies of the individual and the latter being associated with more objective and scientific aims.
In
the contemporary condition of art’s critique, art terminated both cases in its realization of the impossibility to speak to
the question of “how everything hangs together.” This resulted in new paradigms of tragedy, farce, parody, irony and the postmodern
sublime. Here, art narrates its own compulsion to mirror reality and produces an infinite and traumatic feedback loop of artistic
production.However, making a distinction between what is ‘out there’ and the absolute notion of the impossible, this talk
will speak to the question of how art as a form of techno-cultural-scientific machinery might engage the question of what
it is to compute, render and manifest vectors of knowledge today beyond the structures of capitalism. Here, focusing on some
recent projects and ideas, we will deal with the significant question of art’s capacity to be involved in the production of
reality, the importance of fiction: the crucial question of how art communicates what reality is and should be. Amanda Beech
is an artist and writer. In video, painting, print and sculpture her work proposes art as a form of intelligence and power
beyond the ideals of capitalism and the limits that art has set for itself by means of its critiques. Exhibiting internationally
shows include Delphic Future, Twelve Ten Gallery, Chicago and the Havana Biennale 2021. Forthcoming work includes a book of
philosophy, The Intolerable Image, from MIT.
Reading:
http://amandabeech.com/writing/art-intolerable-knowledge/http://amandabeech.com/writing/heroic-realism-violence-conservatism-and-the-fate-of-culture/Watching:
Statecraft, 2008
https://vimeo.com/179513398/7936580dbf?share=copyMap of the Bomb, 2022 five channel video installation
https://vimeo.com/691912545/e6c331c70d
