Alterity in Art: Towards a Theory and Practice of Infra-thin Critique

Abstract

This article explores distinctively visual presentations and performances of alterity from the perspective of art theory and practice. It gives particular attention to Marcel Duchamps notion and practice of the infra-mince. The 'infra-thin' is not usually related to postcolonial questions. However, numerous evocations of alterity in contemporary art, this article argues, resonate with Duchamps infra-thin-not only in their practices but also in the ways in which they present the relationship between different cultures and views of 'difference'. Focusing on artwork responding to the 'Arab Springs' as a striking instance of wider aesthetics of resistance, this article shows how such art can be seen to adapt the infra-thin for the purposes of a multidirectional critique.

Resisting extractivism as a feminist critical socio‐spatial practice

“…According to Shilton (2014), postcolonial artwork alludes to alternative spaces in past and present moments. “It also points to the future, inventing new practices as it imagines alternative ways for diverse voices and visions to coexist […].…”

“…“It also points to the future, inventing new practices as it imagines alternative ways for diverse voices and visions to coexist […]. Rather it calls for a critical approach that is itself transnational, transhistorical, and multidirectional” (Shilton, 2014, p. 369). In his review, “Learning from documenta 14 , Athens, Post‐Democracy, and Decolonization,” Demos (2017) writes: “In placing viewers uncomfortably in the crossfire of its four large screens, the installation forces an experiential confrontation with this war zone, as if demanding of the viewer to choose whose side they are on.…”

“…Hence, we argue that the artists' activism re-territorializes the Skouries' protest: From the streets and the mountains, the protesting body-land-territory now moves to the cinema theaters, the galleries, the Universities, According to Shilton (2014), postcolonial artwork alludes to alternative spaces in past and present moments.…”

Digital Art and the Tunisian Revolution

“…An ambivalent dynamic between stability and instability is central to a still emerging corpus of responses to the Tunisian Revolution in art across diverse media, from sculpture, installation, performance and graffiti to drawing, painting, photography and video. By exploring this tension such artwork exceeds 'icons of revolutionary exoticism' (Gasteli), which have been used in contexts including the French Revolution and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 'Revolution', as I have discussed elsewhere (Shilton 2013;2014). In some works this dynamic is produced through the use of contingent elementsparticularly organic, often perishable materials.…”