Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform Without Informing

Alfredo Cramerotti

Appreared in the Series Büchs’n’Books — Art and Knowledge Production in Context
Volume 2
With a foreword by Sally O’Reilly, an introduction by Andrei Siclodi and an epilogue by Irit Rogoff

Published by Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen in cooperation with intellect books (UK) 2009
English language, 112 pages, paperback
EUR 23,00

ISBN: 978-3-9502583-2-5

As the art world eagerly embraces a journalistic approach, Aesthetic Journalism explores why contemporary art exhibitions often consist of interviews, documentaries and reportage. This new mode of journalism is grasping more and more space in modern culture and Cramerotti probes the current merge of art with the sphere of investigative journalism. The attempt to map this field, here defined as ‘Aesthetic Journalism’, challenges, with clear language, the definitions of both art and journalism, and addresses a new mode of information from the point of view of the reader and viewer. The book explores how the production of truth has shifted from the domain of the news media to that of art and aestheticism. With examples and theories from within the contemporary art and journalistic-scape, the book questions the very foundations of journalism. Aesthethic Journalism suggests future developments of this new relationship between art and documentary journalism, offering itself as a useful tool to audiences, scholars, producers and critics alike.

In 2007 Alfredo Cramerotti was Theory Fellow at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen