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A Study on Giorgio Agamben's Potentiality and Contemporary Art

  • The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
  • Abbr : JASA
  • 2017, 50(), pp.101-136
  • DOI : 10.17527/JASA.50.0.04
  • Publisher : 한국미학예술학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Published : February 28, 2017

Jihye Kim 1

1제주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The study has looked at “potentiality,” one of the key concepts essential to getting insight into Agamben's discourse, from “that which leads up to ethics” and “is emerging from profanation.” Agamben defined life ostracized from the boundary of law and left unprotected from violence as “bare life” and called the existence living such life “Homo sacer.” For Schmitt, the state of exception is thoroughly viewed on political terms, and the sovereign is seen as the one with power and authority to suspend law and stand above the law in emergency situation. For Agamben, however, a person who exists outside the law is homo sacer and is defined by the law despite that such being is excluded from the law. As the boundaries of the state of exception grow to blur, bare life which used to stay within the boundary gets liberated from a government and becomes the only area where such beings may be subject and object of conflicts characterizing political order- a place where government power is organized and at the same time liberation is proclaimed. In the process, potentiality comes into operation. For Agamben, potentiality is about something like “non-agency, in other words, a sort of possibility that something “I would prefer not to” and may not be made distinct from potentiality of presence and non-presence or acting or non-acting. In addition, experience for potentiality is solely connected to ethical experience, while profanation restores deprived potentiality. In the study, I took a look at Marina Abramovic's 2010 performance art exhibition “The Artist Is Present” held in Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Meiro Koizumi’s “My voice would reach you”, Marcel Duchamp's “Fountain”, La Monte Young's sound performance works and LEE Wonho's “the white field series” and KO Seungwook's “For Elise.”

Citation status

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