Sezgin Boynik

The Art of Slogans

Sezgin Boynik further pursued his recent work that deals with the use of slogans in contemporary (conceptual) art. The starting point was the assumption that “lingustic postulates” are constitutive elements in most conceptual art theory and practice. In order to get to these postulates in a more practical way, Boynik set out a proposition that may enable us to deal with language pragmatically. This means dealing with the “performative” aspects of language in order to arrive at the “constative” aspects of conceptual art. For this purpose, the most adequate way to realize this was to look at the relation between art and slogans: both slogans of art discourse and political slogans that art deals with. Boynik claims that “slogans embody the most elementary difficulties in the political use of language: they show the contradictions between ‘performative’ and ‘constative’ aspects; they are a product of collective transformations, and most of the social changes are inscribed into slogans (‘slogans have their own history’); they are formal and synthetic productions that allow for systematization of artistic creativity; and what is most important they impose a truth which does not exclude intellectual (theoretical or constative) abstraction.” During his fellowship at Büchsenhausen, Boynik has pursued his work on the art of slogans in three different fields:

– In the field of theory by researching more concisely the linguistic approaches dealing with art, especially focusing on the works of Russian Formalists from the 1920s and 1930s.
– In the field of history to understand the conditions of Art & Language’s indexing practices and their distinction from other conceptual artistic practices which use language as their material.
– In the field of practice to find ways for applying this theoretical and historical work on slogans to more specified social or political issues connected with art from Yugoslavia.