Contingent Factors: A Response to Cem A’s ‘Consensus Aesthetics: The Political Economy of Agreement in Contemporary Art'

This essay is a direct response to Consensus Aesthetics: The Political Economy of Agreement in Contemporary Art

All images used were created by me and are to be taken in jest. Just being a silly little guy here.

INTRODUCTION

A friend recently texted me an article by that diagnosed a set of conditions for what they call Consensus Aesthetics. I was very interested in this because they related to a question I have been turning over for a long time: where exactly is the political potency of art, and how is validity produced, acknowledged, or denied? As someone operating within the art world, as both an arts administrator and an artist, I am constantly negotiating this split between structural critique and structural complicity, and have learned that meaning is not inherent in art itself; it happens through and amid its contradictions, compromises, and asymmetries of power.

At one point, writer Cem A. turns to Claire Bishop’s critique of Relational Aesthetics, particularly her reading of Liam Gillick’s work and her framing of conviviality as a depoliticized social form. This citation is telling — not only because both critiques emerge from privileged encounters within highly mediated, large-scale institutional contexts, but because they share a similar critical posture.

Many of the objections Gillick raised in his eventual response to Bishop’s critique apply with a similar force here: the dependence on personal observation, the vagueness of the examples invoked, and the tendency to substitute dissatisfaction for demonstration. Like Bishop’s intervention, A.’s argument depends on examples that are vaguely articulated and characterized more through feeling than through critical consideration. The artworks are cited less for their status as objects of critical consideration and more for their potential to serve as examples for generalization, with ideological perception replacing evidence. Although A. offers a potential methodology for refusing Consensus Aesthetics through Strategic Empathy, they ultimately advocate for methods that they themselves earlier acknowledged as unsustainable — or even impossible — within the very spaces in which they seek to apply them.

The quick transition from impression to conclusion allows for swift, rhetorical simplification at the cost of specificity and strength. In this way, the argument’s conclusions always run well ahead of their basis in evidence, duplicating familiar inaccuracies that once required a comprehensive rebuttal — first in the case of Gillick, and now again with myself.

Such a lack of methodological specificity enables a set of argumentative shortcuts, and, most importantly, the lack of consideration for political practices that position themselves not in opposition to external structures but within the frameworks themselves, without proclaiming themselves as refusals or interruptions. This omission effectively narrows the field of what can count as political action, privileging legibility over efficacy and spectacle over embedded practice. 

A.’s position corresponds very closely to the earlier privileging of antagonism and conflict as necessarily more politically efficacious than relational forms written about by Bishop. Conflict is here considered not simply one option among others, but a measure in and of itself of seriousness or effectiveness. Antagonism becomes a kind of metonym for the radical, unrelated to the conditions under which the conflict occurs.

What this model misses is that conflict itself has differential risk, and not all antagonism has the same costs. While conflict may not pose an immediate threat for all artists and cultural workers, for some — those who are precariously employed, racialized, gendered, disabled, and so on — conflict may pose real risks in terms of one’s profession, one’s economic well-being, and one’s own position within the institution from which one can speak without jeopardizing one’s own access and legitimacy as a result of conflict itself.

While A. briefly acknowledges institutional precarity, they nonetheless fail to grapple with the uneven risks of conflict. Antagonism may be professionally survivable for some, but for others — particularly those who are precariously employed, racialized, gendered, disabled, or otherwise structurally vulnerable — it carries tangible threats of danger. In such a situation, conviviality and soft agreement become not modes of political avoidance but modes of safety and survival, which highlight how power conditions those who can afford to be oppositional and those who cannot. By ignoring such conditions, A.'s argument perpetuates a narrow and disproportionate politics that celebrates those who can afford conflict and devalues all other modes of politics.

A. invokes hope in which difference and conflict are welcomed within gallery contexts, as though artists were not already working in these spaces and engaging these themes through decisions and mechanisms that operate at the level of process, infrastructure, and relation. These forms of intervention are unlikely to be recognized as “radical” within dominant discourses, yet are no less consequential because of that very invisibility.

Overlooking such artistic engagement is not a neutral gesture but a deliberate condensing of the political. It circumscribes meaningful art as an activity most readily visible as a gesture of disruption, conflict, or refusal, while making other forms of political engagement less legible or less politically efficacious. In this sense, the gesture of the critique implicitly reaffirms a hierarchy of political expression.

In reproducing this hierarchy, the critique mirrors the very limitations Gillick identified in Bishop’s work — most notably, the conflation of aesthetic posture with political effect. What remains unresolved is the central political question the argument claims to confront but never fully articulates: who decides what counts as politically impactful art, and according to which criteria?

Just Vibes

A fundamental issue I have with A.’s arguments is the lack of evidence to support them, with no concrete or sustained example of Consensus Aesthetics ever being fully articulated. Instead of illustrating the idea, the concept remains vague, repeatedly referenced through broad concepts such as legibility, lack of friction, and neoliberal managerial logic, without being tied to a specific curatorial choice, artwork, or artistic approach.

Further slippage towards overgeneralization happens through the  homogenization of vastly different artistic and creative ecosystems into a single, monolithic “art world". This move flattens the complexity of art’s purposes and erases practices that do not operate under the same institutional, economic, or visibility conditions: artist-run-centres/spaces, artist collectives, co-operatives, etc. By implicitly treating highly visible, internationally sanctioned institutions as the normative model for art-making and reception, the argument unintentionally reproduces the very logic it seeks to critique: these spaces are positioned — even in their failure — as the primary sites through which artistic impact and political value are measured. When two international biennials are mobilized as evidence for an endless cycle of politically inflected yet substantively hollow presentations, the issue may not be an absence of politically meaningful artistic work, but rather the assumption that such work should — or  can — be located within institutional structures that, by the writer’s own account, are structurally incapable of sustaining it.

In the absence of a clearly articulated example of work that can be meaningfully described as Consensus Aesthetics, the essay’s appeal to disruption as a counterpoint leaves unresolved what, concretely, politically impactful art is meant to look like. While it is relatively easy to point to instances of controversial or antagonistic artistic gestures whose primary effect was notoriety, it is far more difficult to identify conflicts generated through artistic practice that have resulted in sustained or systemic change. Without this distinction, Consensus Aesthetics operates less as an analytically grounded critical category than as a diagnostic mood or sensibility — a way of naming dissatisfaction rather than rigorously defining an aesthetic or political formation. The absence of a fully developed example thus suggests that what is being critiqued may be less a coherent, widely shared aesthetic regime than a generalized — yet understandable — frustration with highly visible institutional exhibitions.

This ambiguity becomes more pronounced when the essay does attempt to offer tangible illustrations of disruption within institutional art spaces. Most notably, A. invokes — without naming — the actions of Just Stop Oil protesters, best known for throwing soup at paintings by Van Gogh and da Vinci. This example collapses a crucial distinction between artistic practice and political protest. These actions were not artworks produced for, commissioned by, or situated within museums as part of their curatorial logic, but acts of protest staged in public space, with  museums sometimes chosen as a backdrop or symbolic site. This example sits uneasily within an argument ostensibly concerned with artistic production, curatorial strategy, and institutional display; it risks substituting external political spectacle for analysis of “art world” practices themselves.

A similar looseness characterizes the essay’s turn toward Strategic Empathy as a proposed alternative, exemplified through a brief reference to "Crit Club", described as:

“…a participatory performance where two teams debate an unrealistic question about art. The format encourages disagreement without professional risk, allowing participants to practise critical engagement as a shared exercise rather than a competition.”

Beyond this vague outline, little is established about when, where, with whom this work takes place, or how it operates within specific institutional conditions. As with earlier examples, the reference gestures toward a model without situating it in a concrete context, leaving its political efficacy largely assumed rather than demonstrated. 

Using another example of what a Strategically Empathetic exhibition looks like is the 1996 show Interpol. Such examples suggest that the author may have a clearer grasp of Strategic Empathy as a concept than of Consensus Aesthetics as an operative structure — yet this clarity remains unevenly applied, resulting in a proposal that is rhetorically compelling but insufficiently grounded in the material and institutional realities it seeks to address.

When taken together, these gaps in specificity do more than just weaken isolated points — they make the entire argument structurally unstable. When key concepts aren't fully developed, and examples are only lightly sketched, it's easy for critics to tear the argument apart. That’s not necessarily because the concerns being raised are unimportant, but because the argument lacks the support needed to hold them up. Statements are offered instead of evidence, tone takes the place of method, and readers are left without the critical tools to properly assess what’s being argued.

This kind of fragility has real consequences. Arguments that rely on vague categories and loosely framed examples become easy targets. Critics can point out flaws without ever engaging a clear, well-defined position. Disagreement ends up being about interpretation, not facts — ironically reinforcing the kind of impressionistic reasoning the essay itself seems to challenge. The result is an argument that may sound persuasive on the surface but doesn't hold up under closer scrutiny.

It’s in this context that the essay’s shift toward antagonism needs to be understood. Conflict and disruption come across less as deliberate political strategies and more like stand-ins — used to compensate for a lack of clarity and unresolved analysis. In this case, antagonism becomes more about striking a pose than presenting a method.

Artist as Antagonist, Allegedly

In 2015, artists and brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman had their sculpture Piggyback removed from the contemporary art museum MAXXI in Rome. The work was publicly described as pornographic, prompting its removal shortly after installation. A statement defending the sculpture — relayed through a third party — framed the artists’ intent as an effort “to generate discussion about false morality and provoke debate,” while reaffirming a commitment to artistic freedom of expression*. I was able to see the work in person prior to its removal, and can attest to the intensity of it: deliberately unappealing, viscerally discomforting, and truly difficult to encounter without a sense of ethical suspicion; I have a distinct memory of averting my gaze once my brain had time to register what it was actually seeing. That discomfort appeared to function as the primary register through which the work operated and was revealed to be intentional in its creation.

I want to consider how Piggyback, and the institutional and public reactions surrounding it, sit within the arguments and limits of Consensus Aesthetics. Specifically, the case raises questions about how provocation is more often mobilized as a stand-in for political seriousness than agreeability, and how discomfort itself can be mistaken for critical depth. While the work undoubtedly generated debate, it is less clear whether that debate moved beyond predictable moral polarization or whether it ultimately reinforced the very discursive patterns — outrage, defense, withdrawal — that Consensus Aesthetics claims to critique. In this sense, the sculpture’s reception offers a useful lens for examining when conflict produces meaningful political engagement, and when it instead circulates as a familiar, self-fulfilling gesture of transgression.

The artist as antagonist — the provocateur, the disruptor, or opposition to the institution — is an increasingly familiar figure within modern art. As the necessary agent of disruption, this figure is often the stand-in for the structural change: the remover of the status quo, the revealer of power relations. Banksy is perhaps the most potent example of the artist-as-antagonist trope, and at its most widely legible.  His work is organized around public acts of disruption, intended to be consumed post-event through documentation and secondhand discourse as much as through the act itself. Once discovered, these interventions provoke extended discussion precisely because they operate at the crux of surprise, critique, and (supposed) institutional embarrassment*.

Across a series of highly publicized interventions — from the meta-documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), to the immersive Dismaland (2015), to the post-sale shredding of Girl with Balloon at Sotheby’s (2018) — his practice is structured around the re-presentation and re-contextualization of visuals found commonly in society. Crucially, this form of antagonism is not only tolerated by institutions but is frequently anticipated and accommodated, increasingly becoming desired. Although Banksy’s apparent willingness to take risks could be attributed to his anonymity (more on that later), it can also be understood as evidence that conflict and disruption are not, in themselves, aesthetically unpalatable or counter-mainstream. On the contrary, antagonism has become a familiar and expected — even tiresome — mode within contemporary culture.

Maximo Caminero, a Miami-based artist, visited the 2014 exhibition According To What? by artist Ai WeiWei,  picked up a ceramic vase and dropped it on the floor. According to Caminero, “it was it was a spontaneous protest” and that he “lifted the vase and let it smash on the floor like Weiwei did in his picture.” The picture he is referencing is the work Dropping a Dynasty Urn (1995) where Ai drops and smashes a two-thousand-year-old ceramic object. 

The responses of Ai and the museum that hosted the exhibition both condemned Caminero's actions. Ai stated he thought that a line should be drawn when it came to damaging public or private property as part of a protest. The museum released a statement saying “…we have the highest respect for freedom of expression, but this destructive act is vandalism and disrespectful to another artist and his work... and to our community.”

Does Ai’s disavowal of Caminero’s protest weaken the critical potency of his own work? If Ai’s artistic language is rooted in transgression and dissent, what does it mean when those same gestures are deemed unacceptable when performed by others? Whose act of protest holds more weight in this scenario? Should priority be given to Ai, an almost universally recognized artist protesting the very real state violence inflicted upon him, even when backed by major institutions? Or does Caminero, who challenges those very institutions and questions the sanctity of established figures like Ai, deserve priority due to his “art world” status as a smaller, lesser-known artist? And finally, if both artists are protesting larger systems of oppression that shape their experiences, can their actions be seen as part of the same struggle?

I don’t think any of the three examples I’ve discussed — Piggyback, Banksy, Ai Weiwei vs. Caminero — necessarily refute or unravel A.’s argument for Consensus Aesthetics. None of them, on their own, dismantles the structural condition A. describes, nor do they invalidate the claim that contemporary art institutions often neutralize political content through legibility, moral alignment, and risk management. Rather, these cases function as pressure points that complicate any straightforward account of conflict, antagonism, and disruption as inherently emancipatory or politically coherent within institutional contexts.

These examples don’t point to the absence of Consensus Aesthetics, but rather to its fragility. They show how similar actions can be interpreted in vastly different ways depending on who is behind them, when they happen, how institutions frame them, and who bears the risk. They highlight that conflict isn’t uniform or always clearly understood, and that acts of disruption can be absorbed, praised, criticized, or punished — all while still operating within the boundaries of consensus. In this light, the examples aren’t so much arguments against consensus as they are illustrations of how antagonism can exist without necessarily challenging it or leading to meaningful political outcomes. What they really call for is a clearer distinction between symbolic acts of disruption, institutional permissiveness, and the kinds of conflict that truly break through the polished surface of consensus.

Under These Conditions?

I want to circle back to Banksy and anonymity, as it raises questions about identity and unequal exposure to risk. Arguments advanced by Bishop in favour of conflict over conviviality appear primarily addressed to artists who can afford to stage or represent social inequalities without being structurally bound to them. This perspective privileges a detached, performative engagement with precarity rather than one rooted in lived experience. Although A. briefly recognizes the reality of artistic labor and the precarious situation in which artists find themselves, the work lacks an understanding of inequality as a reality and fails to recognize the uneven vulnerability to risk.

This critique matters because it shapes both who the argument is really speaking to — and who it leaves out. When disruption, risk, and antagonism are positioned as artistic strategies without acknowledging an  inconsistent distribution of harm, the framework relies on an assumed baseline of safety that not everyone shares. The issue isn’t just whether conflict can create political meaning, but whether it’s a viable or ethical approach for all artists. This question becomes especially urgent when we think about those already marginalized by race, class, gender, disability, or migration status — artists whose work often takes place within the very institutions being critiqued, not by choice, but out of necessity. 

A., for instance, poses the question: “What tactical tools remain for the non-elite?” without acknowledging the rich history of responses that already exist. Take, for example, José Esteban Muñoz’s theory of disidentification, which explores how queer people of colour negotiate dominant ideologies and narratives. Rather than fully assimilating into or rejecting mainstream culture, disidentification describes a third mode — a tactical maneuver that allows marginalized individuals to work within cultural forms to transform them from within. It is a method of survival and subversion that resists the binary of either capitulating to or opposing consensus entirely.

Similarly, Félix González-Torres’s "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991) exemplifies how institutional participation can coexist with critique. The work — a pile of candy representing the ideal weight of the artist’s partner, who died of AIDS — is both publicly accessible and deeply personal, inviting the audience to take pieces of candy, slowly diminishing the pile. In doing so, it metaphorically performs the erosion of a body, while simultaneously reclaiming queer presence within museum spaces. González-Torres neither completely repudiates the institution nor completely submits to it; rather, the artist uses the institution's aesthetic and logic to inscribe the presence of loss, love, and the queer into the space.

Strategic Empathy, understood as the discipline of remaining with conflict long enough for something real to change, is similarly not a novel invention but a strategy with deep historical precedents. Similar approaches can be found across earlier theoretical and political methodologies, where engagement across difference functioned less as moral alignment than as a means of survival. For oppressed communities in particular, such practices have long been necessary tools for navigating power, securing resources, and maintaining the possibility of agency within hostile or unequal systems. 

These are just a few of many examples that challenge the idea that there are no tools left for the non-elite. They show that marginality has never meant passivity. Instead, it often requires a more nuanced and creative negotiation of power — one that Consensus Aesthetics and Strategic Empathy, in their supposed universality, tend to flatten or ignore. “Soft choreography” as a term used to describe navigating art spaces carefully sounds like something someone would say without realizing that when conflict isn’t choreographed, you risk being harmed.

A. also asserts that the protective role of institutions should be expanded to cover criticism and disagreement, which is a presumption that dissent must be a stable resource that can be safely housed, preserved, and displayed without altering its conditions of emergence. I, too, believe that institutional and hegemonic critique is necessary, but not all art spaces carry the same power and have access to the same resources; the opposite stance overlooks the fact that many spaces, practices, and communities come into being precisely through conflict — and not all of them can, or should, be required to continually represent that conflict once institutional protection is secured. To claim otherwise would be to render disagreement a permanent performance and not acknowledge its status as a historically contingent force that may exhaust itself, transform, or necessitate resolution.

Organizations such as Native Arts + Cultures Foundation, Creative Growth Art Center, and Kearny Street Workshop exemplify my point. Although they are technically institutions, each has been shaped by specific histories of struggle — against colonial erasure, ableist exclusion, and racialized marginalization — and thus merits safety, stability, and protection without the ongoing expectation of further protest or antagonistic display. Their political significance goes beyond simply performing acts of dissent. These spaces have been fought for, emphasizing autonomy, sustainability, and the rights of community self-sovereignty. This highlights that the power of dissent isn't just in being constantly visible, but in creating the conditions that allow alternative forms of action, connection, and critique to thrive.

At the same time, A. maintains that the critique isn't meant to be anti-institutional, which leaves open important questions about its ultimate direction and targets. While artists, arts workers, and audiences are ostensibly not held fully accountable, they are still clearly identified as partially responsible for the rise of Consensus Aesthetics. Without the benefit of examples to support its claim, the argument tends to lean more on insinuation than on sound analysis, which makes it very difficult to distinguish where the blame is being placed. This approach risks framing Consensus Aesthetics as a failure of courage or imagination, rather than recognizing the broader historical and structural forces that shaped our current circumstances.

Conclusion (or Let’s Agree to Disagree)

It is important to stress that my critique is not predicated on the wholesale rejection of the A’s proposal. Many of the concerns raised — about institutional risk aversion, the erosion of meaningful disagreement, and the hollowing-out of political claims in contemporary art — are persuasive, necessary, and fundamental ideas I agree with. My issue is not with the problem identified, but the methodological structure surrounding its conceptualization. The rationale for Consensus Aesthetics and Strategic Empathy is flawed by its failure to provide the canonical roots that grew from, its inconsistent focus on material conditions, and its underestimation of risks.

I connect with Liam Gillick’s critique of Claire Bishop, not just because of surface-level similarities, but because I feel recognize the value in his response. Rather than dismissing Bishop’s concerns entirely, Gillick steps in to clarify misinterpretations, deepen the discussion, and push back against the oversimplified oppositions that shape her argument. His issue is with how complexity is flattened in the name of political clarity — how antagonism is elevated as the only valid mode of critique, while more ambiguous or negotiated practices are mischaracterized or outright dismissed. 

So why does this matter to me? Because the stakes extend beyond the internal dynamics and logic of art. One of the defining characteristics of fascist and authoritarian movements has historically been a deep suspicion of intellectual life, critical thought, and the arts — precisely because these spaces have the capacity to challenge systems, complicate narratives, and reclaim power. In this sense, the defence of rigorous criticism, freedom of expression, and intellectual accountability is inseparable from the defence of art itself as a public good.

My engagement with A’s essay is really a genuine attempt to practice the very Strategic Empathy their theory advocates for: taking an argument seriously enough to test it, to question its assumptions, and to show where its claims do not hold under scrutiny. Strategic Empathy must include the possibility of critique that does not simply affirm intent but also interrogates consequences if it is to mean anything at all.

Critical engagement, when it works, should feel less like a fight-to-the-death and more like an athletic volley — structured, high-stakes, and each return is shaped by a desire for personal achievement and sportsmanship. The value of discourse lies in its reciprocal structure — each intervention assumes the presence of an oppositional force, someone who sharpens your thinking even in disagreement. Like a rally, it demands precision, practice, and an awareness of the field in which the exchange unfolds. This is why it matters that critiques be grounded and methodologically sound — because in the absence of shared protocols for disagreement, antagonism devolves into spectacle rather than substance.

Our contemporary circumstances offer that cautionary counterpoint: we are living through an era in which misinformation, conspiratorial thinking, and junk science circulate with unprecedented speed.  Sustained by affect, intuition, and “vibes” that refuse evidence or accountability, the danger is not in disagreement itself, but the erosion of shared standards by which arguments can be evaluated, challenged, and revised. Without attention to detail, context, and material conditions, openness to conflict risks becoming indistinguishable from epistemic relativism.

In an era already saturated with ungrounded claims and affective posturing, defending the conditions for meaningful disagreement requires more than just a celebration of conflict, it must be paired with a commitment to argumentative rigour. Not all positions are equally grounded, not all conflicts are equally generative, and not all claims deserve the same weight. If art is to prioritize dissent rather than merely aestheticize it, it must also defend the conditions under which critique can be meaningful.