An analysis on ruptures and intersections of art and politcs: Sample in consideration Istanbul in 2000's

Transition from a Fordist society to a post-Fordist society created a complex, multilayered relation between capital accumulation, creative industries and artistic practices. Urban space, contemporary art produced on this very space and even cultural heritage itself are instrumentalised as resources for regional development. As cultural and artistic products became smart commodities, questions on the possible strategies that art can employ to sustain a critical distance to this valorization came about. Yet, as neoliberalism positioned itself as the unrivaled ultimate economic model of a globalized economy and commodified almost everything, it also tended to obscure and subvert any opposition. Thus, this thesis aims to explore contemporary art's ability as a force of opposition, its ability in building civic capacities to challenge the post fordist, post democratic conditions subjugating the cultural terrain. To serve the purpose addressed here, the first chapter will focus on post-fordist production, and the political transformation it brought about on artistic and cultural domains. Its second section attempts to give a through analysis of the transitive nature of politics and aesthetics, in order to figure out the modalities of a counter hegemonic artistic resistance. The second chapter analyses the restructuring of cultural and urban spheres under post fordism. The sample in consideration is Istanbul. The third chapter examines artistic strategies that elicit response to the symptoms determined in the preceding parts. This chapter presents artworks that put inequalities of neoliberal policy to their focus. It tries to answer how to read criticality in the semiotics of the aesthetics. How this criticality operates and contributes to a counter hegemonic resistance challenging the post fordist post democratic conditions subjugating the cultural terrain. By considering the alterations in the labour process as put forward in the first chapter, this thesis concludes that the central position of creativity in the extraction of surplus value, has made creativity an active element, which the capitalist system requires for its constant production. Thus, such a central element of any established order can also play its part in the subversion of the order. It is also put forward that production of the common sense, which is required for the continuity of a perceptual and a conceptual order, is a common capacity shared by the terrains of politics and aesthetics. Thus artistic and cultural practices just like politics have their part in constructing our social reality. However it is not possible to measure the efficacy of critical strategies of artworks as if they are activist acts. It is the pluralistic quality of the public space created by artistic production and the emancipatory modalities of making sense offered through strategies of works of art that contribute to emancipation.