Abstract :
In this article I explore the nature of the relationship between art and terror/ismand ask why identifications between the two are so routinely and often insistently made. Inso doing, my aim is twofold. Firstly, I explore the possibility of there being a deep-seatedstructural link that exists between art, terror/ism and creativity. In other words, I ask ifterror is a necessary corollary of the ‘creative event’. Secondly, I explore explicit examplesin which artists have sought to create or to emphasise this relationship, from the perspectiveof Contemporary Art practices. In the spirit of experiment rather than of judgment then,this article sets up a series of trials in which art and terror/ism are philosophically,aesthetically and politically blended. It asks where else should such tests be conducted, if notin relation to the artwork and in particular, in relation to those artworks which toy withterror/ism and those artists who claim on some level, to be ‘terrorists’? How is the‘artist-as-terrorist’ to be interpreted and understood alongside existing definitions of bothterrorism and of Art? And finally, what role does imagination play in the construction ofexperience?
