What is the relationship between such and similar developments and discourses, which first and foremost reflect the self-conception of artistic agency, and a philosophical conception of artistic action? Why is it important to talk about the concept of action in art?

Analyses of the transition into the post-modernity, as well as questions about a functionalisation of art, seem to suggest one thing: that the category of action can no longer constitute a category worth taking seriously. The key question is therefore: Must the perspective of globalisation and, in it, that of a functional shift in art necessarily lead to an explicit devaluation of the concept of action? If one starts from the discourse of autonomous agency, as I have just done, then from a subjective perspective of artists in the praxis, an assumption of the effectiveness of their agency seems to co-determine this action. From a sociological analysis of social transitions, there is the risk that the perspective of agency will inevitably vanish in the discourse of artistic functionalisation. On the other hand, this seemingly inevitable vanishing of options for action is countered by a conception of art that, precisely through its assertion that artists are outside such processes, insinuates something dysfunctional.

This second perspective assumes that artists are situated at the margins social processes and thus defines their agency as critics outside the social realm. Briefly, this involves then a discourse of resistance – i.e., artistic agents perform resistance against such processes.

I think, however, that a comparison of the considerations I have presented in the previous six points should not be aimed at either the first or the second paradigm. Rather, it is important to formulate a meaningful concept of action vis-à-vis these two respectively lopsided hypotheses about the social role of art without lapsing into either of the two models. The subjects of action in art should neither disappear nor be stereotyped as mere subjects of resistance.

The aim is thus to define a concept for artistic action that both includes the determinations of the acting subjects and develops a materialistic inner perspective that can also be grasped, among other things, in terms of agency. If one wants to say something about the efficiency of actions, it is necessary to understand them within the context of a praxis in which the results of action are not determined by the agents alone, but in which these actions are only experienced retrospectively and intersubjectively settled upon their functions. It is important to understand artistic action not only as a process that is solely aimed at production as an industrial product, but also as a process that places the piece, the work, the product or the situation in a social context, i.e., in a frame, as a process that is aimed at outcomes of the performance in a later stage. This corresponds, for example, to an idea already found in Aristotle, namely the determination that the purpose set for an action is always located outside this action and is thus never part of this action per se.

In the history of philosophy and sociology in Europe, the categories of purpose and means have escalated in a way, that from today's perspective, blocks our access to their conceptualisation. A kind of climax of the standardisation of the ascription of purpose and means is to be found in the sociology of Max Weber, namely in Weber's ideal type of purpose-economic action. Weber is not too concerned in claiming that all action in society can be subsumed under the scheme of an utilitarian economy. Rather, Weber assumes that there are real differences between purpose-economic, value-economic, affective and irrational action. This amalgam of actions, however, does not lead Weber to reject the unambiguousness of a scheme of action; rather, it inspired him to develop an ideal type as a standard with the help of which hybrid forms can be better inquired. Purpose-economy explains itself through the general rule it explains to us. The paradigm for such a determination is the natural sciences, which in Weber's time underwent a strong renaissance and achieved a considerable recognition. In methodical abstraction, Max Weber therefore explains:

" Zweckrational handelt, wer sein Handeln nach Zweck, Mitteln und Nebenfolgen¹ orientiert und dabei sowohl die Mittel gegen die Zwecke, wie die Zwecke gegen die Nebenfolgen, wie endlich auch die verschiedenen möglichen Zwecke gegeneinander rational abwägt.¹"

Perhaps while reading this definition, one feels that it is a familiar, ideologically accentuated explanation. The thesis I would like to put forward here is that such a model of action, one-sidedly oriented towards rational assessment and strategic deployment of resources, has exerted an influence on aesthetic theory formation and its determinations regarding artistic actions. The announcement of the so-called homo oeconomicus, which one encounters now and again in its function of a rejected dichotomy, exemplifies the role that the rational approach to action plays in art philosophy when it comes to define an artistic counter-paradigm. However, the task of disambiguation, as with Max Weber, also carries the danger of over-conceptualisation.

According to the thesis, the counter-paradigm of non-rational artistic action could only emerge through a bias towards generic actions. Various descriptions are associated with such a deliberately rational act: honest agency, absolute body control, but also the agent’s autonomy vis-à-vis others and his/her milieu.² These concepts imply their opposite: The opacity of the subject is to be juxtaposed alongside a transparent self, as remaining self in the dark; an absolute body-control is to be juxtaposed with submission and a sense from which a kind of reactivity is founded; the assertion of autonomy in relation to others and the environment is likewise linked with mental pictures of affection, docility and reactivity, but also with helplessness and disempowerment.

It is important to move away from such a juxtaposition. For a binarial segmentation of paradigms has resulted with a false contrast foil of autonomous action. However, artistic action should rather be understood as an entanglement of several forms of agency that contrast only in formalised patterns of thought. Expressed in Max Weber's vocabulary, this would mean that it is the hybrid forms of agency that matter when it comes to think about action in art.

Thus, artists in the praxis do not start actions with mere cognitive guidelines or ideas concerning the means one should implement to pursue a purpose, be they aesthetic, social or political. But on the other hand, that does not mean that artists start moved solely by affective, emotional or otherwise irrational impulses.

John Dewey says that our actions and thoughts consist largely in the embodiment of habits. According to Dewey, habits are reactive activities that are impulsively linked to the environment. Cognitive dimensions are inscribed in them. If action, will and thought of the self are determined by habits, and if habits necessarily embody elements of the environment, then the self is fundamentally the result on such elements. It is therefore the self in which the world is embodied. But then, is the human will merely the result of an environment? Dewey's answer is that ready-made habits, i.e. routine, can be sublimed into intelligent or artistic habits. Thinking and feeling thus occur simultaneously, although they are formed, they occur as independent ways in which a subject perceives its environment.³ Dewey cites contingency as an enabling factor for action. It is contingency that motivates creative action.⁴ He calls it an enabling reason. Furthermore, the experiences on which actions are based are contingent; Dewey speaks here of an "inner matter", which he describes as the collection of visual representations, experiences and emotions. However, external contingencies are also conditionants. Changes, according to Dewey, take place in complex liaisons between inner and outer dimensions.

External matter also opposes resistance. The result is that a form or a conformity which affects both inner and outer dimensions arises. And so, the unconscious and the conscious are fashioned, but also the external matter and the medium. It should be clear from such an argument alone that this is not a matter of asserting something that has been deliberately created vis-à-vis an environment. Yet I am of the opinion that concepts such as intention, directionality or purpose do play a role in the description of experience-forming actions.

In a nutshell, we can describe the theoretical consequences of artistic actions in terms of the framework of the ideas that I have mentioned. The connection between socialisation, one's own processing and confrontation of these social conditionants with external influences, but also with one's own sought-after situations, individuals and substances, as well as the moment of their exertion of influence and change, can thus also be grasped in theoretical terms. It is therefore not a model of unambiguous causal reference structures in which the will inscribes itself unchanged into the social realm.

"
[…] künstlerisch handelnde Menschen […] {treffen} im Handeln (und nicht nur zum Beginn […] {ihres} Handelns) Entscheidungen, die {ihnen} als selbst gesetzte Zwecke wertvoll sind. Dass es sich hierbei nicht um objektiv zu bestimmende Zwecke handeln muss, liegt auf der Hand. Andererseits ist es wichtig zu sagen, dass diese Zwecke nicht als Illusion entwertet werden dürfen, sondern dass sie im Rahmen des Gebrauchs poietischer Handlungen Wirksamkeit entfalten. Künstlerische Handlungen entfalten also, soziologisch betrachtet, gesellschaftliche Wirkungen, allerdings nicht nur intendierte Wirkungen.⁵ "

I have tried to understand this as a figure of self-empowerment. In the dynamic process of artistic action, the posited inherent purpose undergoes modifications or negations, so that it is not identified with what ultimately constitutes the end of what is done, of what is performed, of what is embodied. Its redemption and significance is also not something that is the sole responsibility of the artists, but that "die Ermächtigung besteht darin, etwas in ein Maß zu bringen, das das je eigene Maß ist.“ That "empowerment consists in bringing something into ones own dimension“ puts it all in context with all the determinants that I have so far addressed.

Artistic Action & the Functional Change of Art
Prof. Dr. Judith Siegmund

3 — On the philosophical term
artistic action

¹ Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Kap.I, §2

² In reference to Hans Joas.
³ (cf. Zweckbuch 141)
⁴ Ibid., I
⁵ Ibid., II