Interview with Anne Katrine Senstad: Sensorial Aesthetics & Semiotic Narration

She is concerned with sensorial aesthetics, ethics and criticism: the transformative and the transcendental ideas of art and philosophical practice. Senstad was educated at Parsons School of Design and The New School for Social Research, New York, 1990-94, and 1999.

Notable exhibitions include Venice Biennale, Bruges Art and Architecture Triennal, Centre Pompidou Paris, Kunsthal Regelbau 411 Denmark, Haus Der Kultur Der Welt Berlin, Houston Center for Photography Texas, Elga Wimmer Gallery New York, Zendai MoMa Shanghai, He Xiangning Art Museum Shenzhen, Bærum Kunsthall Norway, Kai Art Center Tallinn, etc.

NEON GUIDES ME, a monograph on her light and space practice was published in 2022 on Praun & Guermouche, and includes essays by acclaimed composers, art historians, and writers. Senstad’s work is represented in private, public and corporate collections internationally.

Kisito Assangni (K.A.): Many contemporary artists see the aesthetic as a social and artistic construct where the shapes represent an emotion in innovative ways. What is aesthetic to you? 

Anne Katrine Senstad (A.K.S.): I’m both a purist and anti-purist in many ways. I reflect on the aesthetic in perspective of time and space, the sensuous and cognitive dimension, ethics and intellectual processes, and perhaps semiotic narration. Storytelling is a way of exploring the aesthetic realm. The aesthetic world represents the tangible, the visible and invisible, a living quality.

As a purist and anti-purist, I think of aesthetics as belonging to the realms of beauty, emotion, a harmonious, balanced organization of objects, and to the sensuous. An aesthetic pleasure holds a seductive irresistibility impossible to withstand. It is a magnetic force embodied in an inate object that alters it from dead to living. It is in color, light, sound, mental spaces like philosophical ideas and literature, nature, or the built environment found in devotional spaces or the architectural psychological space. Places of purity, truth, and harmony. Similaritly, aesthetic qualities are also experienced in disturbances, systems of noise, contradicting emotions, disharmony in color, in chaos. 

In Plato’s ideas of aesthetics he talks about representation as in the simulated, the theatrical, one mimics beauty or an event, aesthetics is experiential. I see this echoed in Malevich’s ideas of the non-object’s inherent self, a spiritual aspect to the object, an aesthetic experience through representation of it in the object. Aristotle qualified art as activating the eye and filling the gap between the sensual and spiritual worlds. Mysticism is likewise an aesthetic experiential event to me, as is technology as a historic concept. Technology itself as an aesthetic, is something else. In his text “An Esthetics of Disappointment” (1966)(1), Robert Smithson, inspired by a 9 day festival of art and engineering spearheaded by Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage, complains that; ”Aesthetics have devolved into rare types of stupidity. Each kind of stupidity may be broken down into categories such as bovine formalism, tired painting, eccentric concentrics or numb structures…(..) Vacant in the center, dull at the edge, a few artists are on the true path of stultification”. 

(1) Robert Smithson “The Collected Writings” (1979). P.334-335.

In looking at Smithson’s meanderings in light of contemporaneous aesthetics, aesthetics are represented in a shrinkwrapped and politicized state, it suffers from conditions of consumerism and consumption. Aesthetics is a formless process and emergence, as much as the contained object or emotion, where innovation is one of the conditions. 

The Pink Room Has No Walls – ELEMENTS VIII, 2025 by Anne Katrine Senstad, with a spatial sound environment by composer JG Thirlwell. Temporal Spaces, New York. Photo credit: courtesy of artist.

K.A.: Given your extensive exhibition history, what processes have to be carried out for viewers to understand that an art object represents a feeling, a phenomenon or a concept? 

A.K.S.: I strive to create a democratic culture of the experiential. Once placed in the word, an art work belongs to everyone, the public sphere. The artist statement and artists lineage of references for understanding the work, can be read up on beforehand, but I also think it’s important for the viewer to be open to discover new sensations and allow for the spontaneous to occur. 

The art experience and appreciation process is a subjective, personal experience, and no two people have the same set of emotive response structures of understanding. At the same time, it’s not the artists task to make present as illustration or as entertainment. I demand a certain amount of effort from the viewer, and it's similarly helpful to communicate the artworks potentials for entering it. 

An artwork inhabits the ability to transform the viewer or communicate transcendental ideas and sensations, the “wordless” experiences. For that to occur, there has to be a willingness to let things happen, to be moved, to be seduced. Perceived art is both the subject receiving a gaze, and an object that permeates an experience to the viewer. 

With the troublesome colonization of art world terms like “immersive” and “color” that has now been confiscated by the commodity industries, it made me think that artist should perhaps require more from the public before entering any exhibition. I think the artist does have a responsibility together with the curator and institution to relay to their public the manner in which the intention of the artists work is presented clearly. But the trend where texts and presentations are dumbed down in fear of alienation is unhelpful, it becomes commercialized instead. 

I work across disciplines, methodologies and materials, where the commonalities cross between the perceptual and our cognitive system, light and color, the phenomenology of space, elements of time. This practice involves photography, video and film, installation art and spatial light sculpture. I also work with critical ideas and long term projects on ethics and aesthetics, time-based social political engaged projects, land art and text based art utilizing different languages. This requires introductory explanations and space for discourse, otherwise the work can be misunderstood and misrepresented. An artwork’s foundation, be it ephemeral, performative or object, should be aesthetically strong enough in itself, to draw curiosity for entering it. 

The physiological potentials of my large scale spatial light sculpture practice, allows for a cognitive deep reach into someone. I see this as a universal space, where the sensory and intellectual comprehension of the art is comparable to the gathering of people from all walks of life in large usage spaces, like a cathedral or temple (a place of spiritual and devotional psychological space), a state of physical and psychological transportation to the next chapter (they leave changed from how they entered, something has happened), and, the public square (how we experience a space, its architecture of movement – is it busy or congested, what is the usage of the public space, is it loud or quiet, is it dangerous or safe, is it temporary or resting). 

My intention is for the public to merge with the artwork, become part of it – installation art is activated by the human physical presence. In this case, the viewer can experience the artwork on the most primal levels, it's a space of the subconscious, an illusionary space where its mechanics are exposed. Additionally, the way I use color and sound, manipulates the sensory system, similar to a sensory deprivation chamber, or a space of hyper-stimulation, but in a very subliminal way. My use of structural and topological compositions utilizes the psychology of inhabited shapes/volumes, exist by way of transportational and transformational architectural compositions such as a tunnel-passage way, composed strata inspired by the infrastructures of road networks, scaffolding, or vertical cityscapes, or the simple square structure of the box which is a physical container representing the human psyche and emotions. Where the structures appear geometric and rigid, the materials I use,release, dissolve and contradict, creating balance between internal and external. My land art works function in a similar manner, enveloping the viewer rather than asking them to view the artwork from a distance. Added influences like higher levels of oxygen, weather and wind, time of day, will additionally effect the viewers cognitive system. 

With my photographic works, the flat plane acts as a window that draws the viewer in, or projects into the room, expanding the room with color that dissolve borders and frames. The compositions can be fractal, they displace the logics of mathematical geometry, or employ the scientific language of sound and color frequencies as compositional elements. The invisible becomes visible, the artworks are contained light and color captured in time, arrested light moving through space, the mechanics of a camera in dialogue with the human eye. This gives the viewer a freedom to like or dislike - either they experience aesthetic pleasure, or not. 

I’m interested in how art transports the viewer or moves them through the sublime, has one singular function, the human condition as emotive, who we are, and how do we define space and time. 

POESIS (Elements VII), 2023 by Anne Katrine Senstad, with a spatial sound environment by composer JG Thirlwell. Kunsthal Regelbau 411, Denmark. Curated by Simon Thykjaer. Blue neon installation (Photo by Mikkel Kaldal)

K.A.: Is there an artwork of yours that stands out in this moment as being particularly meaningful to you? Relating to the above, what does it mean to you to be authentic as an artist? 

A.K.S.: To be authentic as an artist is all-encompassing truth within oneself reflected in one’s work. It exists as an extension of one’s own personal authenticity, a truth found in oneself and the absolute. Which means if you operate from a standpoint of inauthenticity, you can never create authentic art, unless it’s authentically fake of course. One can produce lesser works in a transitional period, that seem to inhabit a sense of discomfort and displacement of intention, or look close to someone else’s work, that can be misunderstood as inauthenticity, while it’s just meant as process. 

I have a few pieces that stand out in my mind as particularly meaningful to me. These are works that were just incredibly precise where all the pieces fell beautifully into place and became an exact materialization of what existed in the artist studio in my head. I am also affected by work that has been hard or painful to realize, or I had to fight to materialize, the work becomes precious as a result. 

Chiefly, I think back to my monumental spatial neon sculpture, Radical Light, commissioned by at Kai Art Center in Tallinn in 2019-2020, and the second iteration of it at Seinajoki Kunsthall in Finland in 2021. It stands out to me as a complete work and is deeply meaningful to me as a work of artistic growth, and where the curators had faith in my vision and capabilities. It's such a gift to be given a unique space to inhabit and to develop a new work for. 

My initial response to the two art spaces was to create a powerful work that was a total work that incorporated the unique architectural properties into the artwork, altering the identity of spaces by creating a profound totality. The uniqueness of the space’s histories added an additional layer that I also considered. Kai Art Center is a former submarine factory from 1917 built by Tsar Nicolai II, restored as an all white vaulted space resembling being inside the cavernous body of a whale. The all white environment inspired me to bring forth the northern light phenomena in conceiving of the artwork, a phenomena I have always been careful with. Seinajoki Kunsthall, on the other hand is a former military armory from 1850, where the architect who restored it, emphasized the battleship grey concrete, exposed the industrial structural elements that he hosed down with concrete to enhance decomposition, which allowed for the emphasis of my color temperatures against grey. Both buildings have kept traces of their difficult histories intact from years of occupation, with traces of old painted Russian signage in the hallways, or military numbers over doors, similar to those you see at Chinati foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Radical Light included a breathtaking sound environment by the acclaimed composer JG Thirlwell created specifically for the installation that elevated the work beyond expectation. The light composition consisted of a space of verticality and experiential infinite expansion, surrounded by a grounding, enveloping light horizon, composed of all white neon in color temperatures between 41k Kelvin and 83k Kelvin, further utilizing the elemental nature of sound and light operating in space and time through frequencies and spectra.  The work balances science with ephemerality, color theory with spatial cognition, structure with the perceptual. 

Another important work for me is my last multi chromatic neon sculpture installation, Poiesis created for Kunsthal Regelbau 411 in Denmark in 2023. The contemporary art center consists of a set of former WWII bunkers located on the Atlantic coast of Denmark, where entropy is extremely present and enhances the emotionality of its dark history. The remnants of war are repurposed, transforming any notion of their original usages. Structurally, the two bunkers and their labyrinthian interiors are semi exposed, there are no doors, and located in coastal climate, the concrete walls have natural growth, salt, rust and cracks, which enhances the beauty of the neon, color and the minimal nature of the installations. I basically created a museum level installation in a desolate, windblown, remote place. 

In the main Commando Bunker, I created four monochromatic neon structure installations in Cobalt blue, Pink and Rose, emerald Green and Saffron Yellow, where the public is exposed to one monochromatic chamber at a time. In the adjacent Ammunition Bunker, I created a dual video installation, Cubiculum Red + Blue, where the installations were semi submerged in water. The effect of the abstract imagery with their fast moving light particles reflected into pools of water,  created a bizarre ocular illusion effecting spatial cognition, the walls seemed to move and expand. The unexpected effect was unplanned. Poeisis was an installation of total completion and where I was completely hands on to the smallest detail. The work took me and the kind 80 year old Danish installer 2 weeks to install, inside freezing bunkers during winter. 

In working with these war industry structural remnants that represent the “business of war”, the art work functions as a form of transformational cleansing action, and presents conditions for contemplation and meditation on the nature of the human enterprise.

The Sugarcane Labyrinth, 2009-2010 by Anne Katrine Senstad. An agricultural land art work located in Theriot, Louisiana. (2009-11). Organized in collaboration with Kirsha Kaechele, KKProjects - Life is Art Foundation. Then resulting documentary film with a score by JG Thirlwell has been exhibited at the Canadian Museum of Nature Ottawa, Prospect 3+ New Orleans, Filmmakers Cooperative New York. Installation view from the exhibition IN VIVO Tempo, curated by Wim Melis, 2019, Noorderlicht House of Photography, (NL). (Photo credit: Noorderlicht House of Photography) 

K.A.: From your perspective, what is the importance of art collecting? Is contemporary art open to the masses?

A.K.S.: Traditionally art collecting is an important part of an artist’s existence. It’s not only about financial support, but it provides moral support, belief in your work and you as an artist. Your work is contextualized within a system.

I do think the conditions for art as a valued object has changed and evolved with the times. I don't know if the concept of art collecting or the term can be used anymore, it’s become swallowed up by the worlds of finance, commercialization and commodities. Art has become an extension of political and executive speculative influence, leading to well oiled support of some artists. In the mainstream art world, art collecting has become reduced to an investment tool rather than someone developing an educated and supportive art collection, like lets say the Rubell collection in Miami who were known for supporting Latin American artists, has become comparable with the Las Vegas style crypto investment markets or speculative real estate investment system. It has become mainly a method of hiding or transporting funds or avoiding taxes. I think with the explosion of digital visual culture, there has been a steep growth in number of artists where most of them are not necessarily “natural” artists, but more like tech savvy digital opportunists or culture entrepeneurs, and they have greatly infused, and know how to exploit the art markets. Galleries do in general have large overhead and employees to look after, so they need art that sells, and sells fast.  But what sells and to whom – are galleries just shops? 

I cherish visionary curators and galleries who carry a sense of pride or duty in knowledge and art history, or break the norm with radical or controversial shows, who carry the torch of a visionary sense, who don't copy everyone else.  I think it’s important with retrospectives, with museums and institutions dedicated to solid collections built up over time. I do see most museums now as banks and holdings companies though, where the same exhibitions get shoveled around on tour from museum to museum, void of any form of relatability, it’s only about ticket sales, Instagram pics, merch, corporation-made experience economies, and tourism. This has effected the art collector world and most serious artists careers one way or the other. It created a larger wedge in the collector markets between high priced living artists and the large mass of active artists who are not on the auction house radar. Contemporary visual art for the wide consumer-masses, has lowered the bar for what art is, which is a tragedy, but at the same time accessibility for everyone is a societal political matter and bridge-building. One can wonder if culture as an economy and political tool, should be handled by artists and not by corporations. 

K.A.: What are you currently interested in and how does it feed into your creative thinking? Any future projects?

A.K.S.: In thinking of how art transports the artist, the viewer or moves us through the sublime, art has an important function; it reminds us of the human condition as emotive, who are we and how we define the existential, spatiality, perception, and the time-element. 

I am interested in the human condition across a wide geography of interrelations. I’m currently working on deepening my concepts of the nurturing properties of land, embodiment of land, and the existential qualities of nature, science, and the perceptual realms, learning to stay and staying human in our current world. I am interested in the philosophies, histories and undercurrents of justice and the revolving ethical compass on the diagonal opposition to cynicism, aspects of the humanities and ethics, including the histories of marginalization, its cultures and equality. Our autonomous existence at large in light of justice and technological developments. 

I am currently circling back to several of my reoccurring philosophical and socially engaged ongoing themes. I have several unrealized projects that touch on environment and our place in it. I am looking at some of these themes in a new light, by re-contextualizing, a chiasm of early and current work, including some long term projects that were displaced by the global pandemic and the changing world, that are reconsidered in light for my current practice. I am simultaneously developing the neon sculpture practice into new conceptual and architectural ideas influenced by the pendulum between the dystopic and utopic, the Appolonian and Dionysian, between structural mechanisms and the human enterprise. The infinite can be questioned and re-questioned. For these new iterations, I’m looking at other forms of structures and spaces than the previous military usage spaces, perhaps towards the baroque or ornamental, wide open spaces and the labyrinthian. I have a long history of interweaving my work with site-specific concepts and unique locations, it is really something that continues to influence and stimulate the creative processes in my work. I am looking towards larger and more expansive contexts, challenging times requires, or produces, stronger work.

K.A.: In recent times, conjunctural artistic manifestations are everywhere: there is activist art to combat climate change, collective art to solve social problems, political art to reflect on the discomforts of society. What is your position around these examples? Do you have any moral or ethical responsibilities in your works?

A.K.S.: The conjunctural in art is not a new phenomenon, cross-disciplinary phenomena occurs throughout the history of culture, often as a result of seeking relief for our societal burdens. It is an evolutionary necessity for a forward movement. The recent interest in, or return of these manifestations could be a result of the existential need for change and realization of taking matters into our own hands. 

Personally, I was exposed to and influenced by social-political movements from an early age. Much of my work and thinking was instilled by ethics and a political climate of equality. I was educated in social sciences, humanities, and politics in the 80’s in Norway before moving to New York in 1990 for my art education. As a child I grew up in an environment of post-colonialism and multiculturalism in Singapore, and then in the social-democratic homogenous 1970-80’s Scandinavia – two stark opposites. After graduating from Parsons School of Design and The New School for Social Research in NY, I made a living as a photographer for the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Wired etc, mostly with portraiture, but also with journalism and documentary, which was highly educational through the lived and professional experience. All these experiences and knowledge collecting, contributes to my critical and conceptual work today.

Art lends a natural language for social impact within our democratic mechanisms. Contemporary movements are informed by those who came before. Some of my inspirations, that we also see have carried over to contemporary practices today, are from the experimental and conceptual era in art in the 1960-80’s, fex Gordon Matta-Clark’s collaborative community project FOOD in Soho and his use of abandoned real estate in a crumbling society , Ana Mendieta’s feminist earth works, Helio Oiticia’s and Lygia Clarke’s political Concretism sculptures , Agnes Denes land art and architectural structures for harmonious social living , Hans Haacke’s body of conceptual critical work on aspects of Capitalism and ownership , to name a few. We are responding to many the same recurring issues today. But I think we are experiencing a similar wave in ethical, awakened, protest and principled art as a response to these critical societal and global crises as decades and centuries ago. Parallel to this, I also think there is an aesthetic and critical response happening to the recent history’s neo liberal art and the aftermath of post modernism, all of which are void of the humanist element. 

Relevantly, I can share a few recent projects of mine that illustrate some examples of how my ethical responsibilities manifest. During the pandemic I created a video series entitled How We Live Together on texts extracted from Roland Barthes’ 1977 lecture series How To Live Together – Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces, on idiorrhythmic living formats through the lives of monks, a beautiful document on societal critique. The four films, Utopia, Zeniteia, Marginalities, and Monosis, created in collaboration with acclaimed actor Bill Sage, (American Psycho, Hap & Leonard, Law & Order, and Hal Hartley films), are structured as monologue readings, but with Sage in subjective performance seen and heard from the inside his head, merged with archival footage, and footage shot in NY, Scandinavia and Hawaii during the pandemic. The works point of departure are to understand what was going on as it was happening on an analytical level, to discuss the meaning of societal togetherness and comfortable distance as a utopic state, the nature of fear of the other, of isolation, power and oppression.

In 2014 I established a research and art production platform entitled Capitalism in the Public Realm, which houses recent critical works on ethics and aesthetics. The projects examine aspects of greed, ownership, power, erosion of humanities as a response to our era and to understand the undercurrents of forward driving forces, where we are going. The art produced are text based sculptural works such as Gold Guides Me (2015) commissioned by the Bruges Art and Architecture Triennial, the conceptual light sculpture installation Music for Plutocracy (2021), video works, and collaborative time based projects such as a women-only cross cultural art platform I established in Saudi Arabia (2016-2017), Time Beyond Place. In it I was a performative participant, creator, and organizer, alongside three key Saudi women artists I invited to collaborate, and additionally, local young women from a southern village as participants in a workshop held in private. The Saudi artists included educator and artist Dr Zahrah al Ghamdi who later went on to represent Saudi Arabia in their first National Pavilion in the 59th Venice Biennale, (2019) , London and Dubai based performance artist Ghada Da, and Jeddah based traditional artist Jameelah Mater, sister of well known Saudi artist Ahmed Mater. This “soft feminism” project was at the time groundbreaking and controversial. Today women artists in the Kingdom are highly visible and active.

Prior to this I was involved with the restoration of Post-Katrina New Orleans, where I created a number of works in association with the non-profit foundation KK Projects – Life is Art Foundation, founded by Kirsha Kaechele, who incidentally is now married to the founder of MONA in Tasmania, David Walsh, where she has staged various interesting projects recently . In Theriot, Louisiana I collaborated with a Sugarcane farmer, Ronnie Waguespack Jr and French-Brazilian agricultural economist Alex Vialou, creating a time conditional living land art work, The Sugarcane Labyrinth (2009-2010), raising awareness to localized farming culture in light of large scale industrialized food production, wetland and coastal erosion, Sugarcane as a soil binding and soil cleansing plant that acts as a protectant wall against hurricanes much like bamboo, industrial poisoning of soil resulting from the antiquated Gulf oil rigs, and decades of industrial ground water poisoning stemming from flooding and the Mississippi river. The land art work was an approximately 6000 square meter art work, where the public enters from either of 2 points, experiences loss of direction and confusion, fear from snakes living in the cane and nearby alligators, and a euphoric stimulation from overwhelming amounts of oxygen to the brain. 

K.A.: The influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on creativity and productivity is a controversial topic in the art world. Have you experimented with AI art? How do you see AI impacting the life of artists and the creative process? 

A.K.S.: I recently read a story published by Antoine Gallimard , president of French publishing house Gallimard, who attempted to get Meta’s AI tool Llama to write a novelistic scene in the style of Michel Houellebecq. The AI responded that his language and content was too offensive and instead offered, in English rather than French, to write a scene that was "respectful and inclusive" such as a "group of friends in the park on a sunny afternoon" who sing songs "to celebrate the beauty of diversity". I think this is pretty much how AI is failing in art, it cannot deal with free imagination and the intuitive. It’s quantum picks up on our patterns, but then messes it all up. Its forces seek to construct, to control and alter our world, alter freedom of speech, which basically means the fundamentals of civil rights. Importantly, alter freedom of thought, which means existential autonomy. Who authors these futures and who capitalizes on it? I think many people are concerned about the evolution of the militarization of AI and its escalating policing usage in society.  This kind of impact of AI is aligned with the book banning and book burning movements. AI is not a tool, it’s an agency. “1984” means a total control of the citizen, your history and activity is collected, harvested, and surveilled. 

I have only used AI for minor tasks in art like film editing so far. I have not used AI for any kind of art making from scratch for both ethical and aesthetic reasons, the energy consumption of it is a problematic area. The related robotics realm contains a similar problematic political scenario. Gender specific humanoids are designed to replicate male fantasies of the eternal youthful woman, ready to please. When Sophia was presented designed as a young white woman an open brain, it reminded me of Hannibal, where Hannibal Lecter serves Ray Liottas character’s exposed brain to himself. 

But out of a “Fahrenheit 451” style oppressive threat of our freedoms and culture, I think there is an emerging desire for reading books, for authorship, a need for the tangible, a release from consumer dependency. I am hopeful. I had a conversation with a fellow artist who uses AI a lot, and we joked about Descartes and robots, how the existential “I think therefore I am” presents a similar dualism as the problem with AI. I find it relates to questions about the psycho-sexual theatre of cloning technology, immortality-economy and the perversity of post-human obsessions. A lot of artists have been having fun with this.

I don't see any form of total AI replacement of the intuitive space and creative process that defines art, at least not in my life, but it’s good for things like solving engineering tasks when monitored. I obviously don't know the extent of its usages and its futures, but I am more than highly critical to its all-encompassing power, which reflects a perverse financial gold rush climate of technological paradoxes with immense existential challenges.

K.A.: French thinker Jacques Rancière wrote " When artists adopt other guises or disciplines, are there alternative models of criticism or classification to which we should turn? " How does this resonate with you?

A.K.S.: I mentioned earlier a few radical, experimental artists of the 60-80’s era, an era that both questioned and utilized politicized modes of culture, as well as sought to remove itself from it. The era was influenced by a reaction to a post-war world, industrialization and accumulated wealth and power. Many intentional contemporary new amalgamations are appearing today as well, however it seems the practices that are supported are conditioned for today’s identity and consumerist driven world, which is a very narrow and debilitating space. Feminist Carolee Schneeman’s work is more gritty, hairy, violent, and confrontational than Anne Imhof’s industrial gothic fashionable rituals. Joan Jonas’s classical Japanese theatre inspired performances bear the ordinary, everyday, and pure, rather than spectacular posing as political correct and a clinical radicalism.

The myriad of artists adopting roles as scientist, political activists, social worker, ecologist and other adjacent disciplines, doesn’t necessarily pertain to a neglect of the culture of aesthetics, but shows modes of care, motivated by critical discourse activity, modes of action, and involvement in shaping the world in which we live in. The artist as citizen. It also shows an interflow of knowledge between disciplines that can inform each other, an alchemical side of art making, that can pollinate growth. But it can limit the radical and the borderless in art, if the artists becomes spectator of their own practice, misled by the politically correct and consumerist shadows of Plato’s cave, it neutralizes the artist. However, I think the inclusion of adjacent disciplines, or stages as an ingredient of, a subject, or method for art production, can be evocative and liberating, a testament to evolution, even taking into account its engagements with speculative market forces and commodification.

Main Image: Radical Light (Elements VI), 2020 by Anne Katrine Senstad, with a spatial sound environment by composer JG Thirlwell. Kai Art Center, Tallinn. Curated by Karin Laansoo. Photo credit: courtesy of artist.