After Hegel

After Hegel

 June 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 14, 2011, Omair Hussain publicly interviewed Robert Pippin, on behalf of Platypus, at an event titled On the Possibility of What Isn’t at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Robert Pippin is a professor on the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and the author of numerous works on Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. [Read More]
Art  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  Immanuel Kant  Karl Marx  Marxism  Robert Pippin  Enlightenment  Theodor W. Adorno 

Art, Culture, and Politics

Marxist Approaches

 April 30, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel held as part of the third annual Platypus International Convention, on Saturday, April 30, 2011, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element A transcript of Bret Schneider’s remarks appears in Platypus Review #37 Panelists Omair Hussain Lucy Parker Pac Pobric Bret Schneider Description After its apparent exhaustion as a project of social transformation, Marxism seems to remain alive as a cultural and hermeneutic endeavor. [Read More]
Platypus International Convention 2011  Aesthetics  Art  Contemporary art  Culture  Leon Trotsky  Marxism  Politics  Jacques Rancière  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky  Walter Benjamin 

On the Possibility of What Isn't

An Interview with Robert Pippin

 March 14, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A public interview with Robert Pippin, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society, exploring the implications of Hegel’s thought, particularly regarding art, in the present day. Held on March 14, 2011, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #36 Description Robert Pippin is a professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. [Read More]
Aesthetics  Art  Dialectics  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  Hegelian  Hegelianism  Karl Marx  Marxism 

Praxis, theory, and the unmakeable

Praxis, theory, and the unmakeable

 March 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 19, 2011, Chris Mansour of Platypus interviewed Robert Hullot-Kentor, noted Adorno translator and author of Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. Chris Mansour: For several decades you have been translating and interpreting the relevance of Adorno’s thought for us. In your most recent essays, however, it seems you have mostly wanted to save Adorno’s ideas from appropriation by the postmodern and contemporary canon, which you claim have done “immense damage” to his insights. [Read More]
Art  Critical theory  Francis Bacon  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  Martin Heidegger  Karl Marx  Robert Hullot-Kentor  Theodor W. Adorno 

The relevance of critical theory to art today

The relevance of critical theory to art today

 January 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2010, Platypus hosted a panel entitled “The Relevance of Critical Theory to Art Today” moderated by Chris Mansour at The New School for Social Research in New York. The panel consisted of Philosophy Professors J.M. Bernstein (The New School), Lydia Goehr (Columbia University), and Gregg Horowitz (Pratt Institute and Vanderbilt University), and Chris Cutrone (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Member of Platypus. [Read More]
Art  Marxism  Art and culture  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky  Walter Benjamin 

What is Critique?

 November 20, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

An all day symposium, “What is Critique?” was held on Nov. 20, 2010 at the New School in New York City. The first video is from the afternoon panel, entitled The Art Critique: Its History, Theories, and Practices. This panel consisted of Tom Butter, Simone Douglas, and James Elkins; it was moderated by Laurie Rojas. The second video is documentation of the evening panel, entitled The Relevance of Critical Theory to Art Today. [Read More]
J.M. Bernstein  Aesthetics  Art  Art criticism  Art critique  Critical theory  Critique 

Petrified unrest

A review of the Creative Time Summit

Petrified unrest

 November 6, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

In this situation of “crisis in perception,” it is no longer a question of educating the crude ear to hear music, but of giving it back hearing. It is no longer a question of training the eye to see beauty, but of restoring “perceptibility.” —Susan Buck-Morss1 THOUGH PROMPTING BOOS from the audience at this year’s Creative Time Summit, J. Morgan Puett’s declaration that “capitalism is here to stay” was unintentionally but conclusively affirmed by the content of the event as a whole. [Read More]
Art  Hans Haacke  Art and culture 

I Can't Go On, I'll Go On

A Response to 'Questionnaire on ''The Contemporary''' in 'October' and 'What is Contemporary Art?' in 'e-flux'

I Can't Go On, I'll Go On

 October 8, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into. —Samuel Beckett, Molloy IN WALTER BENJAMIN’S MAGNUM OPUS, The Arcades Project, capitalist modernity is in several instances depicted as a “hellish” existence.1 He describes this condition as history continuing to truck along in its course, but only doing so regressively. [Read More]
Art  Art and Culture 

Is the funeral for the wrong corpse?

Is the funeral for the wrong corpse?

 April 8, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

_HAL FOSTER IS a prominent critic and art historian who contributes regularly to Artforum, New Left Review*, and The Nation. He is also an editor of October. In the fall of 2009, he sent out a questionnaire to 70 critics and curators, asking them what “contemporary” means today. Foster notes that the term “contemporary” is not new, but that “What is new is the sense that, in its very heterogeneity, much present practice seems to float free of historical determination, conceptual definition, and critical judgment. [Read More]
1917  Art  Art and Culture  Artforum  Artists  Contemporary art  Guy Debord  Hal Foster  Modernism  Postmodernism  Robert Smithson  Stalinism  Theodor W. Adorno 

Book Review: Theodor W. Adorno, *Philosophy of New Music*

Book Review: Theodor W. Adorno, *Philosophy of New Music*

 March 15, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE NEW TRANSLATION AND REPUBLICATION of Theodor Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music1 is a further clarification of modernism, necessitated by the latest discontents with postmodernism’s vulgarization, which keeps it at a fictitious distance. Perhaps as his remedy for the most fragmented part of the whole of the arts, namely music, translator Robert Hullot-Kentor has in recent years been steadily reintroducing Adorno’s aesthetic philosophy to English readers.2 The republication of Philosophy of New Music continues this process, further introducing readers to Adorno’s complex aesthetic theory, also elaborated recently in Current of Music, which embodies Adorno’s aesthetic hopes for the early emergence of radio transmission. [Read More]
Arnold Schoenberg  Art  Igor Stravinksy  Max Horkheimer  Theodor W. Adorno  Music