Ästhetik und (Ver-)Lust: Künstlerische Praktiken jenseits der Apokalypse

Abstract

The article examines performative arts as plea(sure) arenas of loss, in which loss is experienced not as a deficit to be compensated, but as an aesthetically productive resource. Drawing on Andreas Reckwitz's sociology of loss, the article demonstrates how artistic works develop positive attitudes and subject positionings that challenge paradigms of progress, moving beyond nostalgic sentiments, their plea for a controlled future or other apocalyptic narratives. Through three artistic works from the performative arts — EndExpo (Association for the Palliative Turn), TORNADO (Tobias Rausch), and x/groove space (Sebastian Matthias) — strategies such as palliative presentism, wonder at non-human agents, and the dissolution of observational distance of audiences are analyzed. These aesthetics enable presence, participation, and a pleasurable approach to uncontrollability, limitation, and contingency. The text examines loss as a driver of perceptual and behavioral experiments that open up a productive relationship between aesthetics and sustainability.