Funktionen und Tendenzen nachhaltigkeitsaffiner Kunstpraktiken

Actors in the field of sustainability express expectations towards the arts in terms of supporting transformation, e.g., through emotional access to people. First, the article examines the extent to which implied notions of social function can be founded in classical sociological thinking about the arts. It deals in particular with theoretical ideas of artworks as counter-worlds that “bring to bear what is dis-advantaged by the prevailing forms” (Luhmann). The modus operandi implied by such models of thought is exclusively one of individual aesthetic contemplation. As this is hardly plausible, and based on an increasingly “post-autonomous” self-image of the arts, the article proposes, secondly, a plural model of six communicative functions, following Roman Jakobson. Sustainability-oriented art practices can be instructively examined in terms of this model, with the aesthetic function no longer claiming a privileged position from the outset. Thirdly, in an exemplary tour d’horizon of a wide variety of socio-ecological artistic positions, the article makes it plausible that working with the six-function model could lead to interesting questions and insights.