woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131How do we \u201crelate\u201d to the objects that still play such a significant role in artistic practice? What do such objects say about themselves, about us, and about art or society? What power do they have over us and our habits of consumption? What symbolic values do we project upon them?\rIn the previous issue, esse opened a discussion on the return \u2014 or the persistence\u2014\rof the materiality of art by focusing on the topic of reskilling. The object itself now takes centre stage, not so much for its material properties but rather for its \u201cexistential\u201d character. In light of Bill Brown\u2019s\r \u201cThing Theory,\u201d which is our point of departure, the present issue revolves around the precise moment in which the object becomes a \u201cthing,\u201d that is, the very moment it takes on a new life and thereby establishes a relation\rbetween subject and animated object.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - \u201cThe story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed\rrelation to the human subject and thus the story of how the thing really names less an object than a particular subject-object relation\u2026 You could imagine things, second, as what is excessive in objects, as what exceeds their mere materialization as objects\ror their mere utilization as objects \u2014 their force as a sensuous presence or as a metaphysical\rpresence, the magic by which objects become values, fetishes, idols, and totems.\u201d Bill Brown, \u201cThing Theory,\u201d in Things, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 4 \u2013 5.<\/span> By the term \u201canimated object\u201d we\runderstand it to mean an object attributed with \u201clife\u201d rather than one that merely moves. Of course, one does not exclude the other, yet objects animated by a mechanism are examined here insofar as their movement is precisely that which bestows life on the work.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis issue\u2019s theme is thus an invitation to reflect on the state of the object in contemporary art from perspectives as diverse as the transformation of the use value of objects into symbolic or artistic values, fetishism or the desire to possess the object, the cult of objects, and the critical power we bestow upon them. This issue also explores how the contemporary notion of the animated object differs from animism in the relationships of exchange that exist between the object and the beholder, while shedding new light on ritualistic objects and the primitivism that prevails in the way we relate to the world. The question of the object as commodity is also addressed, by questioning the commodity fetishism triggered by consumer society (and sometimes the art market), and by examining how certain artists attempt to circumvent the codes of commodity fetishism itself. We also consider the strategies whereby objects resist the process of dematerialization afforded by computer technology, despite their creative use of digital technologies and their modus operandi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the question of the \u201csoul\u201d of objects is but metaphorical, the diverse artworks examined in the following pages invite us to reflect nonetheless on the power (the aura?) that pervades such works and on the different ways in which we engage with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Translated from the French by Eduardo Ralickas] <\/p>\n