This is a guest editorial to the TAMARA JOURNAL special issue, Art & aesthetics of the unconscious.

Digital technology and software networks enable large numbers of knowledge workers to incorporate themselves wherever and whenever they wish and to choose between a sedentary or nomadic lifestyle. One way of configuring these new circumstances is as the extensive power of people, products and markets to speedily overcome obstacles and span distances. However, we increasingly see nonrepresentative corporations accelerating human pace and swallowing open spaces within the rational administrative control of a new supranational “Empire”. Intensive movement, on the other hand, reconfigures the human condition in ways that politically and ethically engage with universalizing global processes. Like the traditional nomads of the steppe or the desert, for example, the movement in question is a complex, dynamic relation characterized by its immediacy and continuous variation of alliance and resistance, that remains difficult to locate, difficult to control, and even more difficult to defeat. The paper argues that nomadism can be a starting point for an opposing strategy to the global knowledge economy.

Tristram Shandy deconstructs the conventions of the emerging modern novel almost as fast as its conventions were minted on the page by other 18th century writers. In consequence, readers of this early novel could not just consume the words on the page as they might do with a history but they required instead an aesthetics of disposal to help them to manage the endless digressions, the blanks in text, and the ambulation in chronology of this most disorganised of novels. In this paper listening to ruptures and fissures in the text is likened to the work of employees today, who similarly have to manage the inter-plays of convention and invention within the disorganisation of the contemporary corporation.

I am researching the five versions of the Manet series on the Execution. Believe it or not, the paintings (and a lithograph I am still searching for) are the subject of heated debate in visualization, historical narrative, and painting research. My contribution is to argue that Manet's visual aesthetics is coming into vogue, and a two traditional aesthetics (empire and traditional monarchy) are declining, being revised, and the official aesthetic is resisting with acts of censorship because of Manet's critique of empire. There are competing aesthetics theorists, such as Bataille (1955), Larsen (1990), and Wilson-Bareau (1992) who argue different ways of viewing the aesthetics of Manet's 4th painted version of “The Execution of Maximilian” (see Version 4).

This paper explores how writing poetry came to make a significant contribution to an exploration of writing as a form of inquiry which questioned whether the process of writing can uncover and successfully express tacit, felt sense of knowing – aesthetics in the sensory embodied sense. An initial aleatory exploration with words led to the discovery of the potential of poetic language to express the inexpressible creating a poetic moment, where object merges with significance, the former opening up the latter. The writing also suggests that writing as a form of inquiry opens up opportunities for a more ethical writing through which there is increased capacity for researchers to ‘enter into the experiences of others’ with greater sensitivity and awareness. The documentation of the stages of the dynamic process of writing demonstrates how writing as a form of inquiry moves through a series of written representations suggesting that there is no difference between writing and field work as the fieldwork and writing blur into one, increasing the problem of representation.

Traditionally, strategic messages were communicated through the power of text and financial measures. Over the years, with an increased use and evident impact of aesthetics, such as art, corporations began to incorporate imagery in strategic messages to strengthen their persuasive power. The addition of this creative use of art has also brought interest in strategy analysis to help uncover those hidden messages and identify marginal but living voices, in other words, antenarratives. In the role of a strategy spectator, understanding the signals for corporate strategic inflection prior to its occurrence is essential when calculating a company‘s future performance. These signals are never handed to you. They are hidden and cannot be identified by accepting the face-value of the dominant and apparent organizational voices, delivered through corporate documents. When a spectator is swooped into the organizational dominant storyline, he/she becomes part of the grand narrative and loses his/her critical perspective. Instead, strategic inflection signals should be identified through organizational antenarratives, uncovered in the deconstruction of an organization‘s strategy storytelling. Deconstruction of imagery, as a new complementary method to text and financial reporting embedded throughout corporate documents, helps strategy spectators understand a more abstract and less obvious side of strategy authors‘ strategic intentions. In the case of Motorola, this paper will demonstrate how imagery has been incorporated into organizational storytelling and how deconstruction could help strategy spectators make sense of and potentially anticipate strategic inflections.

‘Moral perception’ has long been identified as a key pre-requisite for ethical behaviour (Dewey 1974; Aristotle, 1976; MacIntyre, 1985). In order to respond ethically to a given situation, one must first recognise its ethical component. However, the question of how moral perception is developed is more difficult to address. Perceiving ‘accurately’ is itself recognised as being fraught with difficulties, ranging from the impact of motivation, expectations, mental schemas as well as mood and physical comfort. This paper turns to the habits of visual artists and musicians who each in their own ways must cultivate the ability to ‘see the world afresh’ in order to produce art of quality, either through visual artefacts or fleeting performances. The paper highlights how practices of ‘staying with the senses’, ‘engaged detachment’ and ‘imaginative free play’ can enhance our capacity to recognise the moral component of everyday situations encountered and thus increase the possibility of responding to them in ethically astute ways.

Rats crawling, an art gallery, rats as art, warm furry bodies, bright plastic tubes, disgusting, chilled dead frogs, rats for science, a preparation, a sweet little rat, a village hall, women in white coats, rats in cages, a rosette, urine, a rat in a pouch, cuddles, rats for art, the winner is, strong black tea, how many do you have, in the literature, breeding, get more rats, a rat down a sleeve, I’ll give you a lift, sign in, a rack of cages, what is that, the data shows, please wash your hands, they can smell your perfume, protestors, I don’t know, a knock out, brain surgery, squeak squeak, the Morris water maze, toys, slice, you are a messy boy, the critique, I haven’t got a licence, drawings, rats in art, do you mind, a duvet, insurance, a queue, a drawing device, sugar rats, chunky knits, where’s the nearest rat, black rubbery tails, video camera, a T-maze, sawdust, a cleavage, nail clippings, face painting, artist rat, drawings, it’s different, two young women, a judge, art for rats, agility training, he remembers from last time.

This paper explores the aesthetics of ethics through an examination of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi. Through the metaphor of the carver, we demonstrate that instrumentality, ethics and aesthetics work together in a fluid state of play that provides the means to achieve the partnership relationships inherent in the Treaty. We claim that the theory of tensegrity allows for contestations surrounding meanings of the Treaty’s intent and opens a space for growth and development. This is illustrated by the March 2010 signing of a memorandum of understanding between Bay of Plenty iwi and Tasman Pulp and Paper which affords both parties with a means to work productively together for their mutual benefit. This contemporary illustration is compared with the construction and carvings of the Te Tiriti O Waitangi Whare Rūnanga which demonstrate in a tangible way how aesthetics and ethics work together to build community solidarity among people of diverse backgrounds.