Abstract

The text develops a concept of art beyond the difference between aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy. Here, art is understood as an improvisational practice. Drawing on the characteristic structure of impulse and reaction that defines improvisation, the relationship between artworks and non-aesthetic practices can be redefined: artworks emanate a wide range of impulses, which are taken up by other human practices (e.g. affective practices, movements, perceptions and linguistic articulations). By this, artworks are constitutively tied to the reactions these impulses generate. The autonomy of artistic impulses is thus always already linked to a heteronomy, in the sense of being dependent on reactions within other human practices. Art must be understood through its inseparable entanglement of autonomy and heteronomy.