Spiritualiteit, funksionaliteit, kommoditeit: die kunswerk as spel en fiksie

[摘要] The artworks in the Propitas project make playful commercial offers aimed at participating beholders. The nature, function and approach of the works are informed by a discernible spiritual, commercial and financial climate within households. Changes within this climate can be indicated which correspond to a shifting alignment towards the things in which contemporary households, communities and societies place their hope and trust. My works especially thematise the ways in which these shifts are expressed as fathomable longings for consolation, nurturing, guarantees and enchantment. It can be expected that the consumer market will anticipate these longings and will react to them in the form of countless commercial offers. Consequently, insurance and security products are repeatedly cited in my work. Insurance and, to a degree, security products, involve future-directed projections that make uncertainty exploitable to the consumer market. Both sectors also aim to affectively placate and sooth fears regarding possible future occurrences of disruption and calamity. Of interest is the fact that contemporary religious institutions take a commercial approach and make similar reassuring offers. The existential security that they once offered communities has been diluted to the emotional affectation of reassurance, nurturing, mystery and enchantment. The use of the term 'spirituality' in various contexts pertains to the longing for experiences that are simultaneously enchanting and soothing. In the fictional and satirical guarantees and reassurances that my works offer, a claim is laid to functional pragmatic attitudes and the emotional longing for deepening and enchantment �?an inconsistent, contradictory dynamic I refer to as 'spiritual functionalism'. My research is aimed at understanding the condition, creation and dynamics of the relevant social inclinations, dispositions and longings. Shared fears and anxieties play a cardinal role within the shaping of communal life worlds, since they mirror what is regarded as good, right and desirable. Underlying communal anxieties and uncertainties often manifest as certain indicative narratives. Of interest is that elements of play, enchantment and delight comes to the fore in the narrative processes, through which anxiety and uncertainty is stabilized. The socio-historical development of capitalism and industrialisation, as well as the triumph of rationality and secularisation in the West, has left contemporary societies with a number of sources of discontent. The 'image of the good life' towards which people aim their efforts and hope, is plagued by pluralities, contradictions and unsatisfactory solutions. In the wake of the credibility crisis within which traditional religions currently find themselves, 'spirituality' offers a defence against discontentedness but without opposing the existing consumer climate. I suggest that the dynamic of spiritual functionalism that is visible in my work offers a convergence of contradictory dispositions and addresses the above mentioned dissatisfactions. The above mentioned dispositional conditions culminate within the domestic circumstances of white South African middle class households, but are by no means exclusive to them. Some of the elements that these households are furnished with (security and insurance products, as well as styles of decor), suggest an exceptional alertness towards the assault of fate as well as an overwhelming fear of disruption. Within these households, there is a reliance on material and financial circumstances in order to maintain fantasies and fictions regarding 'lifestyle'. An attitude of fortification and escapism is observable in this fictitious lifestyle, towards which the consumer market and spiritual institutions undeniably react. The approach of the artworks in the Propitas project is satirical, playful and tongue-in-cheek throughout, an attitude that encourages the supposed beholder to play along imaginatively. Since the works present a playful, fictitious commercial offer, the beholder assumes the implied role of a supposed purchaser. The beholder must assume the skilful, discerning attitude of the commercial consumer in order to 'buy in' to what the works ostensibly offer. The imaginative participatory play offers numerous possibilities of discovery and resistance towards the existing obscuring effect of the consumer market and stated soothing fictions.

[发布机构] University of the Free State