More than Useful: Aesthetics Objects and Social Change 

Artist/researcher Tintin Wulia discusses aesthetics, the public space, and social transformation – within the tangle of imagination, emotion, and sociopolitical institution.

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Moderated by RAISIN Curator Asha Iman Veal and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class

Wulia urges seeing beyond the trope of usefulness in socially engaged art, to focus on the mechanisms of social change that are specifically aesthetic. Her argument is that imagination and emotion – two aesthetically-prone mental phenomena – have been entangled with the transformation of sociopolitical institutions for millennia. Citing results from her aesthetic fieldworks in urban public spaces during her Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship (2014-16), amongst others, Wulia discusses how the tangle of imagination, emotion, and sociopolitical institutions can especially pivot on aesthetic objects. Finally, she proposes an analytical method drawing mainly from sociology and artistic practice-based research, which includes repurposing Charles Tilly’s semantic grammar to analyse currently uncollated archives comprising three-decade worth of 900 socially engaged art projects globally.

Tintin Wulia is principal investigator of “Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare” (Swedish Research Council, 2021-23) at HDK-Valand/Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg – and an artist who has been examining borders for more than two decades. Her works are in significant public collections such as the Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands. She has published in over thirty countries, including in major exhibitions such as the Moscow Biennale (2011), Sharjah Biennale (2013), and Venice Biennale (2017).

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6018NORTH.ORG/RAISIN

September 17 - December 18, 2021