Short treatise on art

This text is an attempt to address a set of fundamental terms that articulate art's relation to capitalism, both its identity and contradiction. These terms – namely, work, life, death – each present a dialectical form through which art can be identified or opposed to capitalism; for instance, the relation of work to artwork, to alienated work, and to unalienated work. The resulting text is an original attempt to articulate this dialectical logic of art in the most fundamental and precise terms. The text derives from a number of papers or talks, but its origins lie in a contribution to the 'Aesthetics and Contemporary Art' conference held at Middlesex University in March 2008 - a collaboration between the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, at Middlesex University, and Research Centre for 'Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits', at Free University, Berlin. The book, Aesthetics and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2011), is effectively a publication of the proceedings from this conference.