11:15
The project dwells with the question of the esthetic of the urban monuments, which are deprived of commemorative, ideological, or political function in the society. Such monuments can hardly be interpreted with the traditional terms of urban sociology such as “typical-unique” after Benjamin. They can’t be viewed as typical esthetic objects and are hardly involved in any traditional historic contexts (Eyerman 2006). Such art includes wider forms such as amateur, applied, and decorative arts, while the conceptualization of art is much broader as Dewey’s notion of “art as experience” (Foreman-Wernet and Dervin 2011). Communication with arts involves wide categories of participation, and can be amateur or professional, active or passive, individual or collective, continuous or episodic, public or private (Jackson and Herranz 2002). One of the most suitable categories for depicting such art is that of profane (Kurakin 2011) as they are connected with triviality, commonplace practices and deprived from the institution and personality of the author. Such art seeks to cause new cognitive effects within the audience. The general feature of these monuments is breaking the barriers between the art and popular culture (Witkin 2006). To a great extent it is laughter that causes laminality between the profane and the sacred (Giesen 2011). The new aesthetics of the profane art will be studied at the example of new monuments in Russia which have appeared in a great number after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Attention will be paid to perception of the new aesthetics in the public discourse. Within the typology of the profane monuments I introduce, I will focus on those that are aimed at identity construction. I will study the narratives they evoke or are included into in the mass media.
1. Giesen B. Zwischenlagen. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wiss. 2011.
2. Grant B. New Moscow Monuments, or, States of Innocence. American Ethnologist, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 2001), pp. 332-362.
3. Kuklick H. The Sociology of Knowledge: Retrospect and Prospect. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 9 (1983), pp. 287-310.
4. Foreman-Wernet L., Dervin B. Cultural Experience in Context: Sense-Making the Arts. Journal of Arts Management, Law & Society, Jan-Mar2011, Vol. 41 Issue 1, p1-37.
5. Jackson, M.-R. J., and J. J. Herranz. Culture counts in communities: A framework for measurement. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. 2002.
6. Witkin R. Chewing on Clement Greenberg: Abstractions and the Two Faces of Modernism // Myth, Meaning, And Performance: Toward a New Cultural Sociology of the Arts / Ed. By R. Eyerman and L. Mccormick. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. 2006, p. 35–50.
7. Куракин Д. Ускользающее сакральное: проблема амбивалентности сакрального и ее значение для «сильной программы» культурсоциологии // Социологическое обозрение. 2011. № 3. С. 41-70.