Open AccessKinetic Systems: Jack Burnham and Hans Haacke
Author(s) -
Christina Chau
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
contemporaneity
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2153-5914
DOI - 10.5195/contemp.2014.57
Subject(s) - antipathy , sculpture , interpretation (philosophy) , focus (optics) , philosophy , key (lock) , movement (music) , art history , art , epistemology , aesthetics , computer science , law , physics , political science , linguistics , computer security , optics , politics
The following paper argues that Jack Burnham’s antipathy for kineticism in “Systems Esthetics” and Beyond Modern Sculpture has contributed to an assumption that kineticism is an obsolete practice “rooted in another age.” Contrary to Burnham, I argue that a focus on the kinetic movement in Hans Haacke’s sculptures is productive for establishing key understandings of systems theory in art. My interpretation of Haacke’s art emphasizes that movement in time is a key aspect of the artist’s approach to sytems theory, and is useful for making viewers conscious of the systems of perception at play when confronted with ontologically unstable works of art.