Art and journalism

pp. 203-224

in: Chris Nash, What is journalism?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

This chapter considers the question raised in the opening lines of Chap.  1: can journalism be art? And if so, what sort of journalism can be art? First, it reviews in detail the arguments about Haacke's work and Haacke's own writings on the socio-political context of art and its communicative dimension. Buchloh and others have commented on the similarities between Haacke's art and "factography," in which journalism and photography were proposed as the radical edge of revolutionary art by Russian futurists in the 1920s. It was a short-lived period of experimentation in which the proponents of contesting positions explored the implications of their views. Key issues were the de-professionalisation of artistic work, the mechanisation of production processes, and the incorporation of public engagement as an intrinsic element of the artworks themselves. The second half of the chapter reviews their arguments for journalism as art in the 1920s context of their formulation and discusses their relevance to the contemporary context.