The Rhetorics of Audience. The Space of Arts Consumption as Political Construction

Abstract

This article aims to show how the space for leisure practices in the art sector is a political construction. To do this, the essay focuses on public (art audience) as key concept. It argues that art audiences are critically engaged and politically significant communities, through which each society gives an institutional dimension to cultural practices. In dialogue with modern thinkers such as Adorno, Baudrillard, Warburg and Benjamin, or architects like Rem Koolhaas, the article presents audiences and publics from both a social and institutional points of view, understanding that the temporal and spatial dynamics behind their community boundaries are worth exploring. We think that there are at least two dominant forms of an emerging social rhetoric that are producing innovative ways of building the spaces for consuming cultural offer in the late modern society: we call them rhetorics of convergence and rhetorics of persuation.