Postcards from Nowhere
Does the artwork create the locus of the meaningful, of the lasting space, of the human world, as it did in an earlier epoch? As Jed Perl observes, today's art "replace[s] the there that constitutes a work of art with a nowhere." This in turn raises the question of whether it is the there which constitutes the work of art or whether it is the work of art that constitutes the there. Hannah Arendt, following Heidegger, to some extent, argued for the latter, that the artwork, as a mortal thing rendered immortal by our commitment to preservation, worlds the world, founds the public space as a space of immortalization wherein mortals might enter and claim a piece of immortality, and thus lasting meaning.
Does the artwork create the locus of the meaningful, of the lasting space, of the human world, as it did in an earlier epoch? As Jed Perl observes, today's art "replace[s] the there that constitutes a work of art with a nowhere." This in turn raises the question of whether it is the there which constitutes the work of art or whether it is the work of art that constitutes the there. Hannah Arendt, following Heidegger, to some extent, argued for the latter, that the artwork, as a mortal thing rendered immortal by our commitment to preservation, worlds the world, founds the public space as a space of immortalization wherein mortals might enter and claim a piece of immortality, and thus lasting meaning.
