Unespecificity and the form

Abstract

The notion of form has been cultivated as indispensable to art since Kant. And even though the formalists tried to dissolve the opposition between form and content, this clash remains more alive than ever in the present. Analyzing the work of Nuno Ramos, Florencia Garramuño states that the artist's works “distance themselves [from] purely formal issues” and that the viewer is taken to “consider the effects and enigmas” that the work produces “instead of focusing on the aesthetic form”. Also, in the Indicionário do Contemporâneo (“Indictionary of the Contemporary”), in the entry on the “unspecific practices” of the present, we read that works that expand themselves in the direction of other genres or materials (artistic or not) “call into question the notion of a definite form”. Considering the relationship between the notions of unspecificity and form, in this article I would like to further investigate the concept of form and its operability for the unspecific works produced today. The main premise is that although many productions cannot be identified as pertaining to specific genres, it may be possible to consider that their unspecificity is an indication that suggests the reinvention of contemporary forms of telling, but not its disposal. Thus, by carrying out a theoretical survey on the notion of form to reflect on its validity today, I take as a focal point for the analysis the newest novel by Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli, Archive of the Lost Children.