#800 Daisy Dixon: Art as Speech, Artistic Hate Speech, and Immoral Artists
RECORDED ON JUNE 19th 2023.
Dr. Daisy Dixon is a philosopher of art and an artist, and a Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. Her research falls at the intersection of philosophy of art, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. She explores how visual art behaves like speech, and how curators and interpreters can affect what an artwork communicates to its audience. Her current project concerns unjust aesthetics and aesthetic injustice, focusing on artistic hate speech, aesthetic ‘counterspeech’, and deceptive art. Her teaching interests span aesthetics, philosophy of language, ethics, and feminist philosophy. She is also a practicing artist in paint and sound.
In this episode, we go through topics at the intersection of philosophy of art and political philosophy. We start by discussing what it means for an artwork to have meaning, if it makes sense to think that it would have one single meaning independent of context, the influence of culture, how meaning changes over time, and the role that curators play. We talk about how artworks can be speech acts, and how art can lie. We discuss artistic hate speech, the political role that art can play, and aesthetic counterspeech as an alternative to censorship. We then discuss immoral artists, how we can determine that an artist is morally problematic, and we should deal with their artworks. Finally, we talk about the politics and ethics of museums.
Time Links:
Intro
The meaning of artworks
Artworks as speech acts
Do artworks have one single meaning independent of context?
The influence of culture
How meaning changes over time
The role of curators
Can art lie?
Artistic hate speech, and the political role that art can play
Aesthetic counterspeech as an alternative to censorship
On immoral artists
The politics and ethics of museums. Are they really places where we can get an objective point of view of cultures across the globe?
Follow Dr. Dixon’s work!
Follow Dr. Dixon’s work:
Website: https://bit.ly/3HTCNuo
PhilPeople profile: https://bit.ly/3K91WUB
Twitter handle: @daisyldixon