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From shamed to famed : the transition of a former Eastern German arts academy to the talent hotbed of a contemporary painters' school : the Hochschüle für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig / Sophie A. Gerlach -- Attacking objectification : Jerzy Bereś in dialogue with Marcel Duchamp / Klara Kemp-Welch -- On the ruins of a utopia : Armenian avant-garde and the group act / Angela Harutyunyan -- Art communities, public spaces and collective actions in Armenian contemporary art / Vardan Azatyan -- Appropriating the ex-Cold War / Malcolm Miles -- The end of an idea : on art, horizons and the post-socialist condition / Simon Sheikh -- Exploring critical and political art in the United Kingdom and Serbia / Sophie Hope & Marko Stamenkovic -- Other landscapes (for Weimar, Goethe and Schiller) / Daniela Brasil -- The ecology of post-socialism and the implications of sustainability for contemporary art / Maja Fowkes and Reuben Fowkes -- Functions, functionalism and functionlessness : on the social function of public art after modernism / Freee Art Collective

Heated debates and strong emotions occasionally arise in the public sphere in the wake of an art object. The interaction that follows becomes part of what we as citizens share in a democracy, with its particular conditions of political speech and democratic exchange. By studying four art events – that is, public contestations regarding art objects – formations of democratic and political subjectivities are highlighted, as well as the constitution of political speech. The analysis tracks the space of conflict that arises in the four chosen art events. The theoretical framework consists of poststructuralist conceptualizations of radical democracy, mainly those associated with Chantal Mouffe, Aletta Norval, and Jacques Rancière. In the analysis of the democratic and political work that takes place in the art events, a distinction is made between political and democratic dimensions. The political dimensions emphasize processes of politicization and depoliticization, as well as the formation of political subjects and voices. The democratic dimensions foreground the conditions of the exchange and identifications within a certain democratic order or community. Four events have been selected for the analysis, two from the Netherlands and two from Sweden. The events all occur within a relatively short time period: 2006, 2008 and 2009, 2012, respectively. The studied empirical material is broad and includes for example printed media, television, radio, social media, and political documents. The reading of the material starts with a set of questions that correspond to the distinction between the political and democratic dimensions. However, the uniqueness of each event is reflected by different theoretical emphasis in the analysis. A Dutch art project by Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss sheds light on processes of engaging democratically and exclusions regarding who has the right to take part in the public debate. Issues of voice and legitimacy are highlighted in the event involving the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Intelligibility, conditions of representation and possibilities of assuming a certain subject position are in focus in the analysis of the debate surrounding a cake performance by the Swedish artist Makode Linde. The study of the discussion spurred by Jikke van Loon's monument in honour of Anton de Kom, emphasizes how memory and silence operate in a postcolonial context to influence the possibility of being heard. The analysis of the four art events reveals the complexity and conflictual nature of the conditions of political and democratic subjectivities and speech. The events suggest that, within radical democratic theory, we need to engage more depth with the relational dimension. Only by including the interaction that occurs can we understand the conditions and boundaries of speaking politically and the construction of legitimate political and democratic subjects. In the events, articulations of different subjectivities depend on their reception in an often complicated way that is enmeshed in a struggle over whether statements and demands constitute speech or noise. Furthermore, the strong emotions in the events can be understood as part of certain investments in a hegemonic order, and the threats of violence highlight the challenges of antagonism present in any order.

Abstract
This article examines the appearance of feet in surrealist art in terms of their thematic contribution to the philosophical aims of the surrealist movement. Georges Bataille's theory of bassesse as the mechanism to achieve the informe, or the destruction of all categories of thought, is the basis for the reading of the significance of feet within the surrealist project outlined in this article. It discusses the theoretical preoccupations that make feet appropriate subjects for surrealist art and examines how several specific works of surrealist art employ images of feet.

Abstract
Gail Day's Dialectical Passions not only traces the trajectories of leading New Left critics of art and architecture – T.J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Massimo Cacciari, Craig Owens, Fredric Jameson and Hal Foster – it also provides a meditation on the problem of negation and the experience of defeat. This review retraces Day's arguments, reflecting on her recovery and re-interrogation of negation and dialectics in postwar art theory. In particular, it aims to critically assess her stress on the 'negative thought' of Tafuri and Cacciari and the possibilities of reactivating a thought of negativity in the contemporary moment.

Until recently still a blank spot on the world map of art, China today occupies one of the top positions in the rankings of the global art market and has moved into the center of the speculations and the covetousness of its protagonists. But what is really happening on the spot, beyond the ethnocentric distortions of the Western viewpoint? What social representations and uses of art can be identified? A research team from the University of St. Gallen has taken up such questions in an ethnographical field research project which enables the actors in this emergent and nonetheless already market-dominated art field to have their say.