VIDEO: Bojana Cvejić on Aesthetic individualism

In search of how we perform ourselves in current capitalist society, we repeatedly stumble upon art. The experience of one’s individuality and autonomy in self-creation and self-expression points to the aesthetic authority that performing arts exert on the formation of the self today. Add to that the new venues of self-performance such as social media plus the new business of “artification”, and the prophecy from the 1960s-70s that “everyone is an artist” and that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” has been fulfilled. This talk will unfold the new truth games in which individuals seek their self-knowledge in embodiment and artistic-like intensity. How do aesthetic qualities of experience shape a predominantly individualized sense of the self? Alternatively, can one perform oneself transindividually, in a kind of collective individuation?

This talk derives from Bojana Cvejic’s research project and upcoming book Performing the Self in the 21st Century (co-written by Ana Vujanovic) – a sequel to Public Sphere by Performance which she presented at the Kaaistudios in 2013.