The artist figure of the dandy or flaneur may appear nostalgic and outdated for today’s social-darwinist performance-oriented society, however, the ‘yearning for individualism’ is as strong as ever. Managers´ turbo-egos underlie the desire for sovereign subjectivity, at least when it comes to ‘life style’ and one is unable to have a ‘way of life’. Can artists, if they are inspired by the systematic radicality of questioning our society, become idols for the protagonists of a proper management absolutism, especially if this ‘absolutism’ is ‘unenlightened’? However, art, which cannot be used to adorn oneself, must be left out of the equation unless the intelligent taste of the public fails to be emancipated in a direction that radically questions itself and the compulsions of its way of life.
Herbert Lachmayer (*1948) is a philosopher. He lives and works in Vienna. Lachmayer teaches at the University of Art and Design Linz, Berlin University of the Arts, University Vienna, and Bauhaus University in Weimar. He is a visiting professor at Stanford University in California.
Vanessa Joan Müller (*1968) is head of dramaturgy at the Kunsthalle Wien. She lives and works in Vienna.