Summary

97

Appropriation

Fall 2019

Contemporary art practices are constantly going outside the field of art to appropriate the codes, gestures, and mechanisms of other social and cultural spheres. However, appropriation also involves the question of social responsibility with regards to artists and curators, particularly in recent debates around cultural appropriation. The aim of this issue is to take some distance from the polarization of the controversies so as to try to better understand what these various forms of appropriation show us about current artistic creation at the aesthetic, ethical, and political levels.

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Image de la couverture du numéro Esse 116 Immersion

Current Issue

Immersion

Winter 2026

This issue is interested in all forms of immersion in contemporary art. How are artists critically engaging with immersive technologies? Conversely, what kinds of practices are challenging technology in their pursuit of immersion? How are these experiences breaking down the boundaries between spectator, body, and art? We put forward proposals that rely on listening and sustained attention rather than on amplification and sensory overload – works using devices that are sometimes relatively simple and non-invasive, sometimes a little more elaborate, but in which participation is, with a few nuances, neither passive nor devoid of critical thinking.

Cover: doux soft club
bleu de lieu, 2023-2024.
Photo: Cléo Sjölander, courtesy of the artists

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