Transformative Kräfte und ästhetische Bildung in zeitgenössischer Kunst

The article traverses contemporary crisis discourses that do not carry transformation as a diffuse goal, but rather, in the sense of Jean-Luc Nancy, fade in the question of doing. In order to fade in this doing in observable processes, the concept of the transformative is introduced. This is not presented as a theoretical model, but is taken from artistic doing, insofar as this illustrates the question of transformation in model-like micro-processes. What radically distinguishes the transformative from the discourse of the "Great Transformation" is its ability to keep open the unavailability of crises and developments and thus also to present something utopian. As the works discussed are measured against current crisis fields of transformation (pandemic, rivalry of genders and cultures, climate crisis), the question is also to what extent their aesthetic-transformative statements have the potential of exits from the crisis and would thus be educational in an elementary sense. Artistic work, so the thesis, can point out directions as an epistemic, seismographic force without presenting solutions.