The fol­low­ing spec­u­lat­ive exer­cise aims at sur­vey­ing the impact of cur­rent Aesthetic Theory, of a cer­tain Contemporary Aesthetics in par­tic­u­lar which pro­poses as fun­da­mental the denom­in­a­tion of what is Art, in its applic­a­tion to History; to, that is, the re-evaluation of past events, even­tu­ally to the re-evaluation of incid­ents whose occur­rence is con­sidered solely pos­sible in the Past and from whence a polit­ical and social sig­ni­fic­ance could emerge. The present exer­cise is to be under­stood as com­par­at­ive, and the nature of the sur­vey is defined by its exem­pli­fic­at­ive or exem­plary char­ac­ter in the dis­place­ment of the object of aes­thet­ical reas­on­ing from a spe­cific object (Art) to a spe­cific occur­rence (History)1.

To this end, we ground ourselves in a mod­ern con­cep­tion of the Individual and in the aes­thetic judg­ment inher­ent to it, as well as in the admit­ted pos­sib­il­ity of a con­tinu­ous re-evaluation and social redis­tri­bu­tion of its inter­pret­a­tion. The meth­od­o­logy here pro­posed for an aes­thetic re-reading of his­tor­ical events is thus rendered bey­ond the fac­tual eval­u­ation of History; it is inde­pend­ent from it without how­ever dis­respect­ing its exist­ence per se; it does not approach the causes and effects involved in the unfold­ing of a given event, or attempt the explan­a­tion or con­sol­id­a­tion of points of view on the polit­ical and social rela­tions poten­tially asso­ci­ated with it. Nevertheless it equally pre­sup­poses the inter­pret­a­tion of those same his­tor­ical events in order to for­mu­late a dif­fer­en­ti­ated pos­sib­il­ity of read­ing and under­stand­ing the event in itself; it is, and must be, con­scious of the social sur­round­ings of the event under con­sid­er­a­tion, even if it does not pro­pose to approach them dir­ectly. Consequently, this sup­posed pos­sib­il­ity does not aim at rethink­ing a his­tor­ical inter­pret­a­tion of a par­tic­u­lar event, but to revolve the event in its sub­ject­ive pos­sib­il­it­ies of value2.

Through its inex­tric­able asso­ci­ation with the Individual, aes­thetic judg­ment neces­sar­ily and intrins­ic­ally con­fers its free­dom to judge any occur­rence as Art. Or, as we prefer, to judge any occur­rence as object of ref­er­en­tial or sub­stant­ive value, cap­able of a com­mu­nic­at­ive bond and exem­plar­ity. This ref­er­en­tial or sub­stant­ive value would then be reposi­tioned equally, sim­ul­tan­eously, and inev­it­ably in the sphere of the indi­vidual and of com­mu­nic­at­ive and com­munit­arian social­iz­a­tion. Towards an oper­at­ive end, and within the his­tor­ical lin­eage of philo­soph­ical thought con­cern­ing the sub­jectiv­ity of value, the dis­place­ment of the aes­thetic judg­ment for its free applic­a­tion is here stated, reaf­firm­ing the pre­pos­i­tion that this judg­ment, defined by its occur­rence in a pre­dom­in­antly sub­ject­ive and indi­vidual régime, pro­poses an intrins­ic­ally social, albeit spe­cial­ized, uni­ver­sal validity.

Therefore, this read­ing is merely a pos­sib­il­ity amongst oth­ers avail­able to the Individual-Reader, who may freely pur­sue this sur­vey on his/her own, as it neces­sar­ily includes and implies him/her. The Individual is intrinsic to the afore­men­tioned appar­atus; solely through the activ­a­tion of the Individual’s inter­veni­ent poten­tial3 is the afore­men­tioned trans­fer­ab­il­ity per­mit­ted. The pos­sib­il­it­ies for con­junc­tion between one and the other ver­tices are innu­mer­able: the­or­et­ic­ally, as many as there are, or can be, and as many as could have been, or were. Therefore, we do not pro­pose a begin­ning and an end to this joint ini­ti­at­ive, or indeed the dir­ec­tion or accu­mu­la­tion of know­ledge aimed at a pro­duct­ive extrac­tion of con­clu­sions. The exer­cise aims above all at repos­i­tion­ing pro­pos­als, at a pro­duct­ive re-evaluation, which is the main exer­cise in the egal­it­arian nego­ti­ation of value, emin­ently redund­ant and ulti­mately rein­for­cing the legit­im­acy of the act, the pro­pos­i­tion which sup­ports it, rad­ical in itself and des­per­ately civic.

1 Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, The Palace of Projects, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, December 13, 1998–April 15, 1999.

2 Neither to act nor to make do proper justice to the Portuguese term fazer. Fazer would lit­er­ally trans­late both the verb to do and the verb to make, neces­sar­ily imply­ing in either case the tem­poral, and effect­ive, notion of action. But such a trans­la­tion must be cau­tiously made; fazer uncon­jug­ated, in the infin­it­ive, is entrenched in abstrac­tion, enlarged by the defined undefin­i­tion. It does not imply so much the action—construction, let us say—but the will to act elev­ated to the con­di­tion of an infin­it­ive: a potent, and lat­ent, uni­ver­sal self-defining abstrac­tion. We have thus opted here for the care­ful and related usage of the words act and mak­ing as a proper trans­la­tion of the term.

3 Boris Groys, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment (London: Afterall Books, 2006).