Temporality and alteration of social boundaries in the making of an art installation

This article addresses a set of contemporary art practices situated within a dialogical paradigm, also referred to as relational aesthetics, and discusses its potential for resistance against market-dominant art production and rather contentious creative industries discourse, particularly in relation to creative labour. These nuanced artistic treatments within a dialogic aesthetics frame, particularly those born out of an experience of ‘displacement’, alter the formation of subjectivity in multiple ways, including the processes of becoming as well as the paradigms of knowledge exchange, associated with artistic practice and research. The question is: how can artists resist a dominant system of art production today? Haunted by this question, I discuss some of the promises as well as threats that unpredictability and dis/placement hold for contemporary visual arts and social change.