Transitory erasures

subjects of institutional critique

Vlad Morariu

pp. 165-180

in: Andreas Oberprantacher, Andrei Siclodi (eds), Subjectivation in political theory and contemporary practices, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

In this chapter Morariu performs an analysis of the historical constitution of the subject in art practices of institutional critique. The investigation proceeds from observing the undecidable nature of art's institutional frames – both enclosing and liberating, both separating and enhancing the display, meaning, and message of whatever is placed within them. Taking The Gift (2012), one of Liberate Tate's guerilla performances addressing BP's sponsorship of the Tate, as a case study, Morariu is particularly interested in understanding the articulation of a collective subject in the "third wave" of institutional critique, the means through which it offers itself legitimation, and the double gesture of an assumed self-erasure before and in relation with the art institution.