Science on Boredom

"It cannot be helped: boredom is not simple. We do not escape boredom ... with a gesture of impatience or rejection" (Roland Barthes, 1973)

The rhetoric of boredom thus gives a critical edge to Hegel's writings on Dutch art. Indeed, Heidegger would later declare that boredom was the fundamental mood of modernity. Subsequent critical studies of boredom have argued that this mood is a variable and historically specific symptom. Goodstein defines boredom in terms of the democratisation of scepticism, a widespread loss of certainty about the transcendental meaningfulness of everyday existence. She emphasises the historicity of a mood that seems to defy the passing of time, and contends that discursive awareness of anomie as an endemic social experience first emerged in the seventeenth century. Expressing the alienation and estrangement of people in secular urban commercial centres, the rhetoric of boredom accompanies the freedoms brought about by the fragmentation of inherited systems of value and external social controls. The discourse of boredom, in other words exposes the limitations of new freedoms, especially the loss of transcendent meaning. Both Goodstein and Reinhard Kuhn have analysed writings on boredom from the17th to the early 20th Century.

[...] Heidegger describes these characteristics as: being left empty and being held limbo. For Heidegger, boredom is a threshold experience; it takes its victims temporally out of the world and holds them in an unsettling state of limbo in which being and time are suspended or drawn out and thus made conspicuous. Langeweile, the German term for boredom, conveys this sense of the lengthening of time and also connotes the sensation of homesickness or world alienation. Heidegger urges his interlocutors not to fight boredom by killing time, filling it with pastimes and diversions. Rather, boredom should be awakened and approached with a listening attitude, for its emptiness holds great potential, offering 'a space in which to play'. This indeterminate space, Heidegger contends, opens opportunities for introspective reflection on everyday subjective experience. Suspending the flow of secular time, the experience of profound boredom prompts awareness of time itself, potentially allowing the bored subject to situate the narrow subjective time of mundane existence within the whole of time.

p.1012 in Boredom's Threshold: Dutch Realism by Angela Vanhalen. Association of Art Historians 2012. 

Creative class

The quote from "The Rise of the Creative city: Culture and Creativity in Copenhagen" Darrin Bayliss, 2006)

It is lifestyle rather then occupation though that seems to distinguish Creative Class. As Baris (2003) notes, this is a "group of people whose creativity permeates every aspect of their lives, who thrive on diversity and change, who collect experiments rather then posessions, and for whom the ability to express individuality and find an outlet for creativity is more important than any material gain".

Factors that attract and retain the Creative Class appears to offer a remarkably simple formula for economic development, which reflects their lifestyle choices and revolves around the three T's - technology, talent, and tolerance. Firstly, talent is attracted to tolerant and open regions where people "from any background, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation can easily plug in" (Florida, 2002c, p.750). Bohemian cities, for instance, are viewed as open and attractive to talented and creative individuals, "including those who are likely to establish high-technology firms and work in high-technology industries" (Florida, 2002a, p.56). Secondly, "the creative class want to have interesting and challenging activities available to them. ... They want to live in a place that has a good buzz" (Florida, 2002b, p.283). Highly educated, talented, high human capital individuals, especially younger employees and those in knowledge industry labour markets "ixhibit a strong preference for cultural amenities" and "are drawn to places with vibrant music scenes, street-level culture, active nightlife, and other signifiers of being 'cool'"(Florida, 2002c, pp.749-750). Rather than shopping malls and sports stadia, the Creative Class seeks out authentic, historic districts; "street level innovation comes out of these 'marginal' neighborhoods, making them vital to nurturing a healthy Creative Class" (Baris,2003)

Education and university

Interesting quote from
'Public Value of the Humanities' Bloomsbury Publishing.

The article argues the need and importance of humanities taught in universities. Sometimes, when money is an issue, humanities are one of the first departments to feel the financial pressure and significant cuts in financing. This article helps to see a bigger picture and opens our eyes towards humanitarian subject that hopefully will make others realize its importance in societal and global context.

p.21
"The idea of the university was promised upon a god: the university was a 'place of teaching universal knowledge' (Newman 1852:v)

p.22
University was to provide:
-Training in the art of argument
-The platonic university is a place where young people learn to think. Their starting point must be the art of thinking disinterestedly, not instrumentally.

p.26
Work in the humanities includes what Matthew Arnold called 'disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that has been known and thought in the world'. Are we to deprive future generations of that learning and propagation? But the humanities do not end there. They include understanding ourselves and other peoples through the language, literature, art, music history, religion, philosophy, sense of identity, politics, desires, fears and ambitions, all of which animate ourselves and others, whether these are the best or not. We are asked whether this understanding is a public good, deserving public support, or merely a private hobby. The answer is that if you believe knowledge is too expensive, try ignorance. The human world is one in which we move and act, just as much as the natural world, which is the object of science. Misunderstanding either is the road to catastrophe; understanding each of them is our only salvation".

Art in theory

And so I began my art classes and I must say, they are the best classes I have been enrolled onto in a long time (at University of Oslo). We have best lecturers here with their philosophy and their thoughts that I can definitely relate to. Through art, we are given a possibility to get a better perspective on this world' events, and life in general. How does art relate to the sociatal structure of our world, even to political events perhaps. I can greatly appreciate it especially, taken all my previous experiences with people who had more materialistic view of art. I do not deny that art can be also materialistic and practical.

But I am more interested in its cultural aspect, how it unites people, ideas, how it can change our perspective on things, and, most importantly, the power of it, how it helped and helps to shape and change history. And these are topics that are being discussed!

Couple of further posts will be extracts from my current readings, and notes from lectures and seminars, so stay tuned if you are interested in the topic!

Art in Theory

Habermas, Jürgen: “Modernity” - An Incomplete Project” (1980) in Art in Theory 1900-1990 An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, Blackwell Publishers 1992, pp. 1000-1008

p.1004

Max Weber characterized cultural modernity as the separation of the substantive reason expressed in religion and metaphysics into three autonomous spheres. They are: science, morality, and art. These came to be differentiated because the unified world-views of religion and metaphysics fell apart. Since the 18C, the problems inherited from these older world-views could be arranged so as to fall under specific aspects of validity: truth, normative rightness, authenticity and beauty. They could be handled as questions of knowledge, or of justice and morality, or of taste. They could then be handled as questions of knowledge, or of justice and morality, or of taste. Scientific discourse, theories of morality, jurisprudence, and the production and criticism of art could in turn be institutionalised. [...]

Enlightenment thinkers of the cast of mind of Condorcet still had the extravagant expectation that the arts and sciences would promote not only the control of natural forces but also understanding of the world and of the self, moral progress, the justice of institutions and even the happiness of human beings. The 20C has shattered this optimism. The differentiation of science, morality and art has come to mean the autonomy of the segments treated by the specialist and their separation from the hermeneutics of everyday communication. This  splitting off is the problem that has given rise to efforts to 'negate' the culture of expertise. But the problem won't go away: should we try to hold on to the intentions of the Enlightenment, feeble as they may be, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause? I now want to return to the problem of artistic culture [...]