Gunnar Sandin

Whenever a material object is selected to represent a physically absent, but emotionally present referent, such as a religious figure or a deceased relative, we have a complex representation situation that involves what we could tentatively label “transgressive cognitive acts”. A transgressive cognitive act is here meant to involve a part that is experienced as present, and as having an effect, but not evidenced from a rationalist or scientific perspective on existence. Sometimes, the complexity of this type of representation is such that argumentation beside the theological, e.g. aesthetic, comes to stand as vicarious to theological or existential opinions about the matter. The semiotics of such vicarious representation have to consider a “leaking” communication model where one part in the trinity - of the sender, the receiver or the referent - escape a coherent or evidenced definition (God can be all three, depending on type of communication). The fact that empirically non-existing referents have been recognized and theorized in semiotics (Eco; Sonesson; and others) does not explain why certain cases of absent semiotic agents, linked to religious belief, or to sense of presence in grief of a deceased person, may give rise to such extreme degree of emotion or sense of existence.Departing from a narrated episode written by J M Coetzee, about the controversy brought up by a crucifix, turning into a quarrel about aesthetic preferences, this paper discusses a series of designed or spontaneously created spatial representations of physically absent, but indirectly and emotionally present referents, as they appear in memorials, cemeteries and funeral chapels. In public acts of memorialisation, the physical objects that represent the deceased – like gravestones or memorial objects placed at sites representing the dead – are often strictly regulated, differently in different cultures. When for instance they appear at unexpected places in the urban environment, or with unfamiliar looks, memorials and their material culture can become highly controversial or be regarded as objectionable.These materialisations with a relation to religion, or existential belief, may give rise to arguments where the aesthetic aspect is the last chance to state a principle order in the cultural scheme in which they are debated. Such arguments are actualised in the current debate about post-secular societies, where it is for instance stated (Habermas) that both religious and secular mentalities must be open to a complementary learning if we are to balance shared citizenship and cultural difference in the post-secular society. It is an objective of this paper to show that the recognition of a semiotics that involves the paradoxical presence of emotionally strong, but fundamentally absent parts in communication can contribute to the aesthetics of physically present, but existentially debated objects, as well as to the discussion about the confronting as well as conjoining elements of regulation of these issues in society. (Less)

In the domain of current spatial semiotics two important, but also radically different, approaches can be distinguished as modelling the co-operative agency of human, material and legal properties of space, namely that of Manar Hammad’s and that of Bruno Latour’s. Hammad, being a semiotician, more true to the Greimasian heritage, regards a finite set of principal actantial types (owners, visitors, authorizers, and material partitions), while Latour, who is more openly critical of structuralist and typological approaches, suggests a more open-ended model as far as the types of actants concern. Both approaches render the production of space in societies or communities from an agency perspective, and these models allow a semiotic analysis of architectural and urban space, that regards the operative impact of environmental and material circumstances as vital for the understanding of social space. This actantial analysis opens for instance for the issue of the negotiability of space, and...

In relation to traditional modes of research within academic context, there is a recent interest in research methods where artistic practices set a larger part of the managerial guidelines, i. e. where the artist or artwork is not the subject of investigation, but rather the operative agent for the carrying through of a project and for the dissemination of results. These methods are by necessity tied to more idiosyncratic and more experimental ways of communicating research. From a «pure» conveying perspective this may seem controversial: Why introduce new interpretative layers into the academically formalized frameworks of communication? However, from an «empirical» art perspective, as well as from the semiotic perspective of the pervasive presence of «vagueness» (Peirce), it is understandable that certain qualities in artistic work, as well as in empirical research, might get lost when conventional methods of investigation are setting the norm. When artistic methods – like practic...

Contemporary forms for criticality may by traditional standards be paradoxical, showing for instance alignment with capital at the same time as criticising the constituents of neo-liberal hegemonies. In regard of emancipatory techniques that foster “release rather than opposition” (Easterling 2013), and non-aggressive “instituent practices” of art (Raunig 2009), institutional transgression is here discussed in terms of different modes of what could be called double institutional articulation. Through a rendering of works by Meirle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Asher, Anna Odell, Center for Urban Pedagogy, and Beate Holmeback, institutional transgression of this double nature is here exemplified and discussed. Discernable modes of institutional articulation appear, such as as acts that conjoin different types of institutions; acts that make spatial and administrative alterations to existing design of institutions; acts that initially operate unannounced in one institutional context, with ...