Anne Imhof: Sulla relazione non oppositiva tra natura e tecnica nell’arte contemporanea

Abstract

The paper aims to examine how philosophical reflection on the relationship between nature and technology finds a productive tool in the comparison with contemporary artistic production. I intend to carry out my analysis on the basis of some considerations on the systematic role of art within Hegel’s philosophy and the presentation of a case study, namely Anne Imhof’s durational performance SEX. Contemporary art suggests that until we move within a paradigm that either thinks of nature in oppositional terms to the human or reduces existence to a naturalist matrix, it will not be possible to think correctly about the increasingly complex interweaving of the technical and natural dimensions. My thesis is that in order to understand the nature we encounter in contemporary art we have to proceed to a “denaturalization of nature”. That is, freeing it from a conceptualization in terms of otherness with respect to everything that is traditionally considered to be proper to the sphere of the human.

Keywords: Art, Contemporary, Hegel, Nature, Technology