Improvising institutions. Art & its institutional borders

Abstract

Images are not born as art. With his ready-mades Marcel Duchamp embro-iled the art business in a debate about the inclusion and exclusion of every-day objects in ‘high’ art. Since then, it has been possible to cite Arthur Danto and talk of the „end of art“. In retros-pect it becomes clear that Duchamp’s expansion of what constitutes art resulted in an explosive increase of art objects and concepts of art, a trend still evident today. Moreover, images and objects from non-art areas with their own tradition provoke the art system by adapting art criteria. The contributions in this book address pro-vocations and interventions, the trans-fer or melding of image and object cultures and explore images, objects and actions in their cultural contexts to get to the bottom of the art system that is in a state of dissolution.