“The artist needs equality”, to quote Jacques Rancière. What this sentence means, and in front of what backdrop it is to be understood, and what consequences it entails — these questions are central to my essay Der Kunstlehrer Jacotot — Jacques Rancière und die Kunstpraxis (The art teacher Jacotot — Jacques Rancière and the practice of art). In recent years, Rancière’s aesthetic and political thought has engaged me in the greatest variety of ways, starting with my work together with the photographer Marc De Blieck on the relevance of Rancière’s approaches for the practice of art (in Zien, doen, denken – Jacques Rancière en de kunstpraktijk [Seeing, doing, thinking – Jacques Rancière and the practice of art]). This work is about my lectures on the topic in Auckland, Ghent, and Antwerp, as well as in the context of two conversations with Rancière in Paris, in 2007 and 2008, on the occasion of the German publications of Der unwissende Lehrmeister and Politik der Literatur (The Politics of Literature [Engl. tr. 2011]). What demands are placed on his egalitarian and emancipatory thinking today? As examples of these: How is equality reconciled with the art market? Is there such a thing as digital equality? And can experience and learning be described as rationalistically as Rancière describes them? More on the matter in Der Kunstlehrer Jacotot!

Der Kunstlehrer Jacotot –
Jacques Rancière und die Kunstpraxis
200 Seiten, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2016
29,90 Euro