It is undoubtedly something special when a living philosopher, be it one of the format and the world recording of a Jürgen Habermas, is the subject of an exhibition. On the occasion of the eightest birthday, a brilliant work show took place in the Cube of the German National Library Frankfurt am Main, which was the academic life's performance of the anniversary.
What is shown in the renowned, renowned, the modern, committed Bielefeld art association on three floors, sets a different accent. Because the presentation focuses entirely on that political commitment, with which Habermas as a public intellectual has intervened over decades and up to the recent times as in the case of his statements about the Ukraine and Gaza war and the geopolitical withdrawal of American superpower and thus written mentality history.
Alex Wissel, born in 1983, an artistic multi -talent that made a name for himself as a draftsman, sculptor and stage set, was inspired by the sentence of all sentences from the pen of philosophers: “The peculiarly casual compulsion of the better argument”. The minutes were made more than fifty years ago and was cited countless times as neologism. In it, the core content of Habermas' idea of communicative reason is idiomatic in it; In demanding linguistic practice, she terminates convincing reasons if we exercise the right to criticism.
Habermas' not infrequently direct statements are fixed as portraits on rauzers
The extraordinary exhibition visually stages how criticism in the democratic spirit takes place as an questioning of political undesirable developments. The portrait series drawn with colored pencil shows an impression of the way in which Habermas, who did not use a velvet gloves as a public intellectual, to attract no velvet gloves. What is neglected in this concentration on visual language is what Habermas calls the “liberating power of the word”.
More meaningful with regard to the political message and impressive are the numerous plague in the lower part of the art association, which is reminiscent of infectious skin diseases, and, quite differently, the video assembly with short -flashing documents over the German -national myth. Both exhibits refer to Habermas' criticism of history revisionist endeavors to “disposal of the German past”, they refer to the continuing infection risks that have gained with the spread of right-wing populist tendencies and the strength of the international AfD of depressing up-to-be.
The tour of the exhibition ends with an installation of two mirrors connected on the back, which have two holes at eye level. In this way, people stand by the opposite of the other in their own reflection can fix the eyes of the opposite. Is intersubjectivity, the related subjects, aesthetically documented? Or does the artist want to convey that discourses have to be carried out under symmetry conditions?
By Alex Wissel, committed to conceptual painting, the sentence reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht comes: “All good art is political, but not every political art is good.” In the process of confrontation with the multimedia exhibits, the exhibition entirely leaves visitors to the visitors whether they can be sensitized by the casual compulsion of the better argument when reception of this unobtrusive positioning political revue.
Alex Wissel. The casual compulsion. Bielefeld Kunstverein; until April 27th. No catalog.
