Und - KünstlerInnen als PionierInnen der Spätmoderne

The object of this study is creative compositions for living, both in terms of their dispositions as well as the possibilities to realise them. For society is changing: What was valid yesterday, can be called into question tomorrow. The so-called `normal` biography has given way to the `chosen` biography, which in essence is the `risk` biography. It is therefore no coincidence that `identity` has become one of the most highly significant social issues in recent years - at the beginning of the 21st century. Globalisation and Late Modernity, in other words: the internationalisation of the economy, the transformation of the working world, individualisation, gender democracy/ gender mainstreaming, etc. stamp life with their own marks and make it thus inevitable that new models for living have to be designed individually. Dispositions for new definitions of models for living and partnerships could be located clearly in the fields of non-standardised career models within creative vocations. The wish and willingness to construct a biography apart from the `norm` biography, to define `femininity` and `masculinity` anew and to live according to one`s own visions, could be found above all amongst creative people. This finding points directly into the area of the arts. Essential analogies between the dispositions of artists practices and the dispositions of Late Modernity practically force one to analyse and describe the biographies of artists in terms of inspiration for new paths towards `one`s own life. The study detaches itself from the theoretical and methodical approach, as in the Cultural Studies and Gender Studies. That means the artistic activity such as designs for living will be interpreted as expressions of culture. Culture` will tend to be distinguished as symbolic, medial, and from plots and thought models of certain forms of knowledge, from which society draws its cultural memory. Questions as to life concepts and formal criteria of the artist, their dealings with societal and cultural dispositions, the grammar and aesthetic of their life compositions, and the thought concepts therein, are in the main focus. The study, consisting of 40 interviews, was designed along the categories of Gender (same number of women as men), Generation (focus was on the post-68-generationen of today`s 35-50 year-olds, Geographic (German-speaking regions with reference to Austria) and Performing and Visual Arts (the Plastic Arts, Music, Literature, Architecture, Film/ Theater and new Mediums). The discussions about their lives and work circled around the basic aspects of human existence like time and space, the conscious and the unconscious, endings and new beginnings, joy and fear, success and failure, and last but not least the deeper meaning of it all. These aspects artists tend to think in non-hegemonic modality. They are imbedded in metanarrative social and scientific discourses that as a result contain other evidence as to the relationship individuals have to the world. They contain inspirations for dealing with de-traditionalizing, as they were described by Ulrich Beck as a phenomenon of the Late Modernity. To a better understanding what that means is for example, to determine one`s own life circumstances, as much as possible. For this reason the importance of space appears first of all, from the absoluteness of a "room of one`s own" up to the option to have the ability to change this room according to one`s own imagination, in order to expose oneself to strangeness, such as new experiences. In its extreme this conception leads to a nomadic lifestyle, and to a nomadic way of thinking in its intellectual counterpart. That is thinking in terms of dynamics and not in rules and regulations, in which continuity and discontinuity manifest themselves in free and lively activity. The guiding principle over all is development, personal as well as in regard of the artistic work. In this context, perceptions such as confusion, aporia, etc. experience new levels of meaning with focus on dynamics and improvement. In listening to the artistic creators speak, it is evident just how far beyond the search for political solutions for the variety of societal problems it would be, to analyze the currently endorsed thought concepts and thinking configurations, in order to confront them with the meaningfulness of other logics such as artistic practices and to make this wider spectrum socially accessible. We have to challenge the thinking itself in re-thinking the thinking. We have to sentisize ourselves not only for what we think but also for how our thinking works. Do we think in bipolarity terms rather than in terms of a symbiosis of the polarities? Do we think in concepts of `either/ or` rather then to refer to the `as-well-as`? When we consider art as a space of possibility, respectively, symbolic rehearsal space for social models diverse moments of cultural relevance in view of the social polylog on new forms of life, are visible in the areas of experience summarized by the artists. The keyword are: complexity, aestetical existence, undoing - gender, authority, family and last bust not least the art of living. When we observe art as unspoken. discourse on the world, then it documents itself in the dimensions of being, which are hidden in a scientific-rational world view and human view. The relativity of the dimensions finds its focus in a self, which in turn puts the different strands into contact with one another by way of a permanent formal process. Although Wassily Kandinsky had already speculated the `and` in overcoming the `either/or` as a logical development of the 20th century , from now on one can only hope that at least in the 21st century it will be able to demonstrate its significance. Because the new in the Late Modernity isn`t the concept of plurality itself, it is the complete transformation of this concept in our thinking and our living.