WEEK 1

It has been a long time coming, May 10, 2026

Starting off the semester I was just becoming immersed in the philosophical theory of Evald Ilyenkov. Having reflected on my work last year (an animation about resistance and an essay about art in service of revolution in particular), I felt that I needed to recalibrate my approach/framework. The most influential text I read in that week was 'Ilyenkov on Aesthetics: Realism, Imagination, and the End of Art' by David Bakhurst. It explains how within Ilyenkov's model, art is the process by which the ideal imprints itself on the material. Art can be understood very broadly as any conscious act of reshaping the material world in this context. By its imprinting or embodiment in the material world by a subject (the artist) other subjects who interact with it then become hosts of that idea, and go on to act on the material world influenced by it; thus further embodying that idea in the material world.

This is the mechanism by which ideal phenomena reproduce - embodied in the material world by the hands of 'artist' hosts. Capitalism, patriarchy, law, morality, religion, all of these things operate in this way. What forms the status quo is what dominates in its imprint on the material, and thus its reinforcement in the ideal world. As the specific, conscious, focussed use of imagination to materialise ideal phenomena, Art (with a capital A, 'fine' art) is clearly a very powerful tool in the struggle to change our ideological and material realities.