What is bare life?
At issue here is “the subject”: the exposed nature, powerlessness and defencelessness of the subject fuels many current philosophical and aesthetic debates. This is accompanied by political considerations and artistic demands for a new self-empowerment of the subject. The forms of representation of such considerations, and questions related to the status of the subject in contemporary art, provide the thematic framework for this particular project topic.

Roger M. Buergel (December 2005): “What is bare  life? This second question underscores the sheer vulnerability and complete exposure of being. Bare life deals with that part of our existence from which no measure of security will ever protect us. But as in sexuality, absolute exposure is intricately connected with infinite pleasure. There is an apocalyptic and obviously political dimension to bare life (brought out by torture and the concentration camp). There is, however, also a lyrical or even ecstatic dimension to it - a freedom for new and unexpected possibilities (in human relations as well as in our relationship to nature or, more generally, the world in which we live). Here and there, art dissolves the radical separation between painful subjection and joyous liberation. But what does that mean for its audiences?”

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