Art, like social science, has three duties.
First: deploy controversies.
Great art doesn’t soothe, it exposes disputes, invites new voices into the frame.
Second: stabilize uncertainties.
Formats, styles, and exhibitions give shape to chaos, making the invisible traceable.
Third: compose the collective.
Art gathers us, renewing the fragile sense of “we” through shared imagination.
Bruno Latour reminds us: culture isn’t an abstract “society.”
It’s a web of surprising connections, each artwork a mediator, never just an object.