Making Sense: For an Effective Aesthetics- Includes an original essay by Jean-Luc Nancy (European Connections)

This volume of texts and images has evolved from papers given at the inaugural Making Sense colloquium, which was held at the University of Cambridge in September 2009. The chapters collected here reflect the multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary sense made at this event, which became something of an artistic installation in itself. The essay ‘Making Sense’ by Jean-Luc Nancy provided the grand finale for the colloquium and is also the culmination of the volume. The collection also includes articles that expound and critique Nancean theory, as well as those that provide challenging manifestos or question the divide between artist and artisan. The volume contrasts works that use texts to make sense of the world with performance pieces that question the sense of theory and seek to make sense through craft, plastic art or painting. By juxtaposing works of pure theory with pieces that incorporate poetry, prose and performance, the book presents the reader with a distillation of the creative act. Contents 7 Acknowledgements ix 11 List of Illustrations xi 13 Lorna Collins Introduction 1 15 Part 1 Theoretical Approaches to Making Sense 7 21 Florian Forestier - Sens et composition: quelques remarques sur la pensée du sens et de l’art chez Jean-Luc Nancy 9 23 Ian James - Af fection and Infinity 23 37 Ryosuke Kakinami - Making Sense of the Fragment: A Reading of The Literary Absolute 33 47 Part 2 Manifestos 49 63 Christopher Watkin - Making Ethical Sense 51 65 Patricia Ribault - Making Makes Sense: Craft as an Exploratory Mode of Thinking 55 69 Hugues Azérad - Making Sense of Epiphanic Images 63 77 Faith Lawrence - The Art of Listening 77 91 Part 3 Poetry 87 101 Carol Mavor - ‘Phantoms of the Past, Dear Companions of Childhood, Vanished Friends’: Making Sense of Sally Mann’s Trees 89 103 Benjamin Morris - On Bilingualism in English 113 127 Part 4 Performance Art 131 145 Susan Sellers and Elizabeth Wright - Painting in Prose: Performing the Artist in Susan Sellers’s Vanessa and Virginia 133 147 Jennifer Milligan, Jean-Luc Moriceau and Victor Bellaich - I Could Only Tell, by the Skin of my Body 141 155 Alice Shyy - Making ‘Me’ Things Makes ‘You’ 149 163 Part 5 Making Sense as ‘Event’ 155 169 Caroline Rannersberger - The Sensation of Painting Country in Remote Northern Australia 157 171 Lorna Collins - Making Sense of Territory: The Painting Event 185 199 Laura McMahon - Passage of Sense: Anish Kapoor’s Memory (2008) with Jean-Luc Nancy 199 213 Part 6 Conclusion 207 221 Jean-Luc Nancy - Making Sense 209 223 Jean-Luc Nancy, translated by Emma Wilson - Making Sense (Translation) 215 229 Notes on Contributors 221 235 Index 227 241 "Making Sense utilises art practice as a pro-active way of thinking that helps us to make sense of the world. It does this by developing an applied understanding of how we can use art as a method of healing and as a critical method of research. Drawing from poststructuralist philosophy, psychoanalysis, arts therapies, and the creative processes of a range of contemporary artists, the book appeals to the fields of art theory, the arts therapies, aesthetics and art practice, whilst it opens the regenerative affects of art-making to everyone. It does this by proposing the agency of 'transformative therapeutics', which defines how art helps us to make sense of the world, by activating, nourishing and understanding a particular world view or situation therein. The purpose of the book is to question and understand how and why art has this facility and power, and make the creative and healing properties of certain modes of expression widely accessible, practical and useful."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Offers texts and images that has evolved from papers given at the inaugural Making Sense colloquium, which was held at the University of Cambridge in September 2009. Lorna Collins And Elizabeth Rush (eds). Includes Bibliographical References And Index.