Journal Publications
Artistic Exceptionalism and the Risks of Activist Art (2023)
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 81 (2), 1-12.
Activist artists often face a difficult question: is striving to change the world undermined when pursued through difficult and experimental artistic means? Looking closely at Adrian Piper's Four Intruders plus Alarm Systems (1980), I consider why this is an important concern for activist art, and assess three different responses in relation to Piper’s work. What I call the conciliatory stance recommends that when activist artists encounter misunderstanding, they should downplay their experimental artistry in favor of fitting their work to their audience's appreciative capacities. What I call the steadfast stance recommends that activist artists have reason to use their privilege of artistic exceptionalism to challenge their audience's expectations, even if this leads to misunderstanding. I argue that a middle position that I call liberal conciliation best balances the demands for actual change placed on activism and the experimental means that artists bring to activism.
Published Version – Penultimate Draft
Book Reviews
Review of Jukka Mikkonen’s Philosophy, Literature, and Understanding: On Reading and Cognition (2022)
British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 63 (3), 499-502.
Published Version – Penultimate Draft
In Progress
Please email for drafts
Historicity and Heterogeneity: On What Makes Art Contemporary
In 2009, Hal Foster proposed that “What is new [in contemporary art] is the sense that, in its very heterogeneity, much present practice seems to float free of historical determination, conceptual definition, and critical judgement.” Anglo-American philosophers have also been struck by contemporary art’s heterogeneity and have reflected upon this to arrive at novel theories of art. I argue that for all its virtues, philosophy of contemporary art arising from this tradition struggles to respond Foster’s worries. To overcome this, I propose that to say what makes contemporary art distinct philosophers need to attend not just to its heterogeneity but also to its historicity: the way contemporary art reflects on its relation to its own historical present. I conclude by defending the normative, revisionary nature of theories of contemporary art that arise from reflection upon its historicity.
Co-Producing Art’s Cognitive Value
It is a common practice for us to view a painting, read a novel, or see a film, and then, after encountering the work, feel that we see the world beyond the canvas, page, or screen in clearer light. This way of learning from art, which I call ‘insight through art’, often requires audiences to become autonomous inquirers, extending and translating whatever the artwork conveys to them in order to learn about aspects of the world that the work does not directly address. However, some worry that insight through art places too much emphasis on what audiences do, and thereby risks ignoring the artwork’s cognitive and artistic achievements. I argue against this, proposing instead that insight through art involves artworks and audiences co-producing cognitive value and sharing the credit for achieving insights. What this brings into focus is that our appreciation of art’s cognitive value is a much more participatory activity than is usually acknowledged.
The Uses of Poetry for Social Change: A Case Study
With Karen Simecek and Andrew Cooper
In this paper we examine the potential power of writing and performing poetry to enable the participation of young people from marginalised backgrounds to participate in political processes through the experience of having their voice acknowledged. Our method is to combine philosophical analysis with the design and implementation of a workshop series on writing and performing poetry with a small group of marginalised young people from Coventry. After sharing the results of the study, we then reflect on two poems written by young people who performed their work at a celebration event at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry in September 2022. From both philosophical and empirical grounds, we argue that writing and performing poetry can play an important role in political education, for it opens space for what we call ‘the acknowledgment of voice’.
Norm-Breaking and Artistic Value
The history of art teems with examples of artworks that break norms. As shocking, disorienting, and difficult as these artworks often are, norm-breaking has flourished within the arts to an unprecedented extent. This is puzzling, because norm-breaking art can often be both onerous to engage and, to the uninitiated, be of entirely uncertain value. In this article, using punk rock as my central example, I attempt to understand why norm-breaking art flourishes. I argue that better understanding the nature of artistic value reveals that there is close conceptual connection between appreciating norm-breaking and evaluating an artwork as art. Since many the activities we perform with art – from appreciation, to production, to promotion – aim at highlighting what makes an artwork artistically valuable, we have good reason to take risks norm-breaking art and cultivate conditions in which it can flourish.
The Aesthetics of Living Through History
When faced with sudden public tragedies, wars, or pandemics we often feel like we are suddenly ‘living through history.’ In this paper, I attempt to understand what might meant when we issue such a statement, and how aesthetic artifacts are often central to helping us express these abrupt shift in experience. I claim that we experience the present as history when we become aware of the ways our intersecting interpretations of the past and future shape what we take to be meaningful in the present. Looking at philosophical accounts of memorial art, I argue that these help us to understand how aesthetic objects play an important role in helping us to record and share this change in existential outlook.
