The Experiment of Freedom

What is the role of public institutions for the presentation, reception and discussion of the arts in society?
 

What is the role of public institutions for the presentation, reception and discussion of the arts in society? The text defends the claim that we should think about this role from the perspective of the significance of the arts for the process of freedom: the public institutions for the presentation of art are – or should be – institutions of liberation. This requires first of all a clarification of the idea of liberation: what does it mean to understand freedom as a process (and hence not as state or condition) and how is such a process of liberation possible? The text will address these questions by drawing on Hegel’s radical theory of Bildung (education in the broadest sense) as liberation. In the second step, we need to clarify the role of the arts, of aesthetic experience, in the becoming of freedom. The text will try to defend the thesis, that this role of the arts can be best analyzed by the idea of experimentation. From this follows that the role of public institutions for the presentation of the arts lies in providing the space and time for experiments of liberation.
 
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