An-Aesthetic Autonomy: Rebuilding the Art World After Its Neoliberal Degradation

In this longform, published by our dear colleagues over at the Institute of Network Cultures, CARADT professor Sebastian Olma examines a number of tendencies within the contemporary art world that push toward what he calls ‘an-aesthetic autonomy’.

These are damaging developments as they deplete society’s aesthetic resources at a moment of intense crisis when we need the imaginative powers of our social sensorium – i.e., the collective space that defines a society’s capacity to engage into sensory relations with its live-world – perhaps more than ever. However, the challenge contemporary art is facing today is not so much the reinstatement of a lost historical notion of aesthetic autonomy but rather the construction of a space for aesthetic practice that could mobilise the social powers of the imagination in a much more comprehensible way.

There are two approaches that could counter the tendency toward an-aesthetic autonomy and help generate a timely aesthetic practice. First, the important efforts to decolonise the contemporary art world should be expanded to include the structural colonisation by the exclusiveness of obscene wealth and the vulgarity of (digital) marketing. Second, we need a radical change in cultural policy to construct the economic foundations for a truly participatory and democratic aesthetic practice.

Read the full longform via INC Longform: https://networkcultures.org/longform/2025/06/26/an-aesthetic-autonomy-rebuilding-the-art-world-after-its-neoliberal-degradation/