Polemics of contemporary kinetic art history: duration, systems aesthetics and the virtual

This thesis addresses a number of roles and effects of kinetic art in contemporary art history. Even though the use of actual movement is common across a variety of artistic disciplines, the term ‘kinetic art’ has often been regarded as a forgotten and obsolete avant-garde practice that has come to be considered in art history as a modern mechanical precursor to contemporary media art practices. Recently, however, a number of artists and art institutions have focused on avant-garde and contemporary kinetic art to capture some of the changing conceptions of temporality and inform a consciousness of contemporaneity today. This renewed attention to kinesis in art highlights some of the misconceptions that are central to considering kineticism as an antiquated historical practice, such as Michel Fried’s resistance to duration in art, Jack Burnham’s appropriation of general systems theory, and Frank Popper’s approach to demateriality and virtuality. By drawing from artists that use movement to expand the perceptions of temporality in their art, such as Jean Tinguely, Hans Haacke, Anthony McCall, László Moholy-Nagy and Olafur Eliasson, this thesis argues that the effects of movement can be both material and immaterial, emergent and incipient with the ability to communicate systems aesthetics. This approach to kinetic art also contributes to understanding a broader consciousness of time in contemporary art and is relevant to those interested in ongoing conceptualisations of temporality in art, contemporary art history, media art theory, modernity, contemporaneity, and kinetic sculpture.