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it is often understood as the realm of beauty, taste, or style, but in an ecological or political context, it functions more as a filter than a decoration. it determines what is seen and how it is perceived and interpreted.

in his essay the politics of aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere describes aesthetics as the 'distribution of the sensible'. it can be seen as a system that organises what can be perceived, spoken about, and recognised as meaningful. he categorises art into three main regimes; the ethical regime, the representational regime, and finally the aesthetic regime. within the aesthetic regime, art becomes political not by delivering blatant messages but by reconfiguring what can be seen, felt, and thought. in this sense, an aesthetic practice is not just about delivering a 'pretty picture' but communicating an intellectual and emotional state through your art.

talking from my own experience, this is what my perception of 'aesthetic' always has been, it's just never been explicitly clear to me. but in modern speech when someone describes something as 'aesthetic', they are not saying that they think it is beautiful but rather that it communicates something beyond its visual appearance, that it is an expression through vision.

this understanding becomes especially relevant within social and ecological activism. aesthetic choices shape not only how an issue is represented, but whether it is perceived as urgent, credible, or even political at all. images of environmental destruction, for example, can not be neutral; they operate within existing visual languages that communicate responsibility and urgency.

and so within Ranciere's 'aesthetic regime', activist art does not need to explain or justify itself through explicit justification. its political force lies in its aesthetic quality - its ability to rearrange perception. aesthetic practices can thus make the often overlooked visible and present unfamiliar narratives.

personally, this reframes aesthetics away from simply visual appearances and towards a responsibility. to work aesthetically is to decide what will appear, what will be excluded, and what form it presents itself as. ultimately, it is my opinion that this sort of aesthetic practice is a condition for an artistic strategy to be effective in the ecological or political fields because the works must create a space where the audience is forced to critically reflect.

adrian robinson
last updated: december 2025