Phenomenology, Aesthetics and the Arts, Joint Conference of the Irish Phenomenological Circle and the British Society for Phenomenology, University College Cork, March 30-April 1, 2012.

Confirmed speakers: Prof Paul Crowther, National University of Ireland, Galway, Prof Joanna Hodge, Manchester Metropolitan University, Prof Gary Schapiro, University of Richmond.

Phenomenology has always been closely associated with aesthetics and the arts. Even Husserl, who conceives it as a 'rigorous science', remarks on the close relation between phenomenological reflection and 'disinterested' aesthetic judgment. The later Heidegger, although dismissive of aesthetics, describes poetic art as the 'happening of truth' and the 'opening of the world'. Merleau-Ponty hopes to find in artistic practice clues for a practice of phenomenology as an embodied alternative to scientistic and intellectualist models of inquiry. We should remember also the contributions made to phenomenology, aesthetics, and reflections on the arts by Sartre, Levinas, Ricoeur, Ingarden, Dufrenne, De Beauvoir, and Hartmann among others. More generally, hermeneutic and later post-structuralist strands of phenomenology, with their emphasis on interpretation and textuality over and against purely logical or causal explanation, often pitch their critiques in artistic, or literary, modes of engagement.

Artists, in turn, find in phenomenology a type of philosophical reflection that offers ways of thinking about the complex embodied and social experiences of their practice. In particular, phenomenological approaches have been exploited as alternatives to the earlier conceptual turn in art making. Now it is time to rethink the relations between phenomenology, aesthetics and the arts in contemporary contexts of new political, wider social and scientific developments.

The British Society for Phenomenology and the newly established Irish Phenomenological Circle have joined together for this conference in order to unite international voices from both philosophical and artistic fields for an open discussion of the potential contributions phenomenology can make to philosophical and artistic practices and debates.

If you are interested in reading a paper at the conference, please send an abstract of approx. 1000 words by 15 January, 2012 to bsp.ipc.2012@gmail.com.

Cfp: Alessandro Bertinetto and Alberto Martinengo, eds. "Rethinking Creativity," TROPOS: JOURNAL OF HERMENEUTICS AND PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM (forthcoming, December 2011).

Tropos invites submission of papers on topics related to creativity, from arts to philosophy.

Mail to: tropos.filosofia@unito.it

The idea that art is (the result of) a process of creation is a modern one. Through a complex history, which is not without contradictions, in the 20th Century its connection to art was debated in different fields, from psychology to epistemology, from cognitive science to hermeneutics. Tropos aims at discussing this complex relationship with a monographical issue, that will be published in December 2011.

Philosophical papers are welcome that investigate:
- The deep transformations of creativity during Modernity;
- The normative significance of creativity;
- Its performative dimension;
- Its connection with action and/or understanding.

Papers may offer: methodological researches; historical-philosophical reconstructions; investigations in aesthetics and art theory; theoretical arguments.

Articles should not exceed 6,500 words and will be submitted to a blind refereering process.

http://www.aise.unito.it/iniziative/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Tropos-Rethinking-Creativity-EXTENDED.pdf

Cfp: "Philosophies of Travel: Exploring the Value of Travel in Art, Literature, and Society," University of Sydney, September 30-October 1, 2011.

Journey, pilgrimage, linear narration; what are the paradigms of travel and how do we think on them? The philosophies of travel make vital revelations about the cultures from which travellers emerge. Do we travel, to change ourselves or as Samuel Johnson argued, to “regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are”? Or do we use the journey to ‘turn back’ on things reflectively, or, as Pliny wrote, “to see what we disregard when it is under our own eyes.” From the ‘temple tourists’ of Augustan Rome, to Thomas Cook’s dreams of a tourism-enabled sobriety, to iPod™-wielding backpackers in the ashrams of India, travel has been understood as education, forging, exploration (both of the worlds of others and of the self), as well as frivolity, hedonism, and colonialism. Tourists have even been called the “barbarians of our Age of Leisure” (Turner and Ash 1975). This conference will look at the habits, traditions, and writings of travellers from the past and the present in order to build a picture of what travel is and has been understood to be for the traveller.

Abstracts for papers of 20min length are welcome on any of the following subjects:

• Philosophical justifications of/explanations of the impulse to travel
• Pilgrimage, religious tourism, and spiritual tourism
• Identity, meaning, and tourism 
• The aesthetics of travel in art, literature, or film
• Ideals of travel/ideals of journeying
• Reactions against travellers/travel

Abstracts of no more than 250 words, as well as a short paragraph with biographical information, should be submitted by 30 June 2011 to Alex Norman (Alex.Norman@sydney.edu.au).

"Touched: Philosophy Meets Art," Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool and Liverpool Biennial 2010, November 19, 2010.

Some of the most prevalent views in the history of philosophy and art have suggested that philosophy and art are both devoted to the discovery of “universal” truths and should result in works, textual or non-textual, that must remain untouched: their value must defy time and transcend space. Yet neither philosophy nor art can be divorced from concrete experience and they both make a claim on our thinking and being—on our most refined concepts and reasoning as well as our most unrefined desires, emotions and dreams. The distance between “knowing oneself” and “making oneself” seems blurred, and to get our bearings we turn to philosophy and to art: they both issue in forms of experience that intensely influence the way we situate ourselves in the world, the way we construct our personal, community, and cultural identities.

We ask: is there a role for touching in the aesthetic division of labour, which is indisputably dominated by the seeing and hearing that seem to safeguard the distance between the work of art and us? How would this change the set of metaphors that still guide our understanding of artistic creation and reception? And then a question of unexpected resonance: are we touched by Art? How do works of art transform the way we understand and form our identities? And indeed, do art festivals such as the Biennial prompt personal, cultural, and social change?

Speakers:

Prof. Berys Gaut (St Andrews);
Prof. Sue Golding, (Greenwich);
Prof. Matthew Kieran (Leeds);
Prof. Derek Matravers (Open University);
Prof. Peter Osborne (Kingston);
Dr Panayiota Vassilopoulou (Liverpool).

Contact: Dr Panayiota Vassilopoulou, Tel: 0151 7942787; e-mail: yiota@liv.ac.uk.

Goldblatt, David. Review of Barry Allen, ARTIFICE AND DESIGN. NDPR (June 2010).

Allen, Barry. Artifice and Design: Art and Technology in Human Experience. Ithaca: Cornell UP 2008. Barry Allen's new book is unusual in its enormous chronological scope and its vast geographical coverage. Artifice and Design: Art and Technology in Human Experience takes us from the Upper Paleolithic Age to the present time and from East Africa to the lifelines of Manhattan. To say that it is interdisciplinary is to understate his attempt to be everywhere academically. Allen turns to "evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, science studies, aesthetics, and the history, philosophy, and anthropology of art and technology" to put in place his panoramic thesis. In its refusal to accept widely accepted views, Artifice and Design is as stubborn as it is provocative. Disagreement with Allen on the history and conceptual analysis of humanity's relationship to art and artifice should not prevent strong praise for his undertaking. So what is it about? Allen claims that the civilization that best manages its technology, the society of well-made works, must include the humanizing appeal of art -- a consideration of aesthetics. Beginning before the existence of what are believed to be the first tools and working up through the history of modern building and contemporary manufacturing, Allen insists that aesthetics, the way things look and feel, has been part of good design and, then, good engineering. Artifice, or workmanship, he says, is intimately connected to a work's perceptual appeal. Whatever else is involved in putting something together, its success requires perceptual concern as well. And art is, or ought to be, not disinterested perception, not art for art's sake, not exiled in museums or otherwise isolated from human life, but rather an integrated part of life, just as technology is irreversibly at one with how we live. Allen is a contextualist. When we utilize and evaluate artifacts, cars for example, we must also consider their effects and recognize that smog too is an artifact whose history is at one with the history of the automobile. So artifacts can be coherent or incoherent with the motives that originated them. Talk about technology always includes talk about a tradition of design and an economy of a people. Designers of machines need to care about what happens to them when machines are no longer needed or when they stop working. When retired, can they be recycled or repaired, or will they simply be added to the accumulating world of trash? "Repair," he says very nicely, "is a kind of care . . . Repair is a caring reply to skill's art". Allen prefaces his discussion of technology with nothing less than speculations on the origins of knowledge. Knowledge, he claims, has little to do with the modern and contemporary epistemology of the epistemologists. For Allen, knowledge begins with doing something. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19889.

Cfp: "The Borderland between Philosophy and Design Research," Centre for Philosophy and Design, Danish Design School, Copenhagen, January 27-29, 2010.

Deadline for contributions: October 18, 2009. The purpose of the conference is to stimulate the flow of ideas between research in philosophy and research in design. At an operational level, the conference aims at creating personal and institutional contacts of lasting value for research cooperation across national and discipline borders. The expected audience includes researchers in design, philosophy or other relevant disciplines, whose work may benefit from or contribute to cross-fertilization between philosophy and design research. Emphasis will be on exchange of promising ideas, rather than on showcasing finished work. Accordingly, most of the presentations and discussions will take place in small round-table groups of about 10 persons. However, to provide a common background, plenary sessions will feature presentations by invited speakers and subsequent debates. Invited Speakers (Confirmed):

• Louis L. Bucciarelli, Emeritus Prof. (Eng. & Technology Studies), MIT School of Engineering;
• Nathan Crilly, Dr., Cambridge Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge;
• Soeren Kjoerup, Emeritus Prof. of Philosophy, Roskilde University and Bergen National Academy of the Arts;
• Peter Kroes, Prof. of Phil. of Technology, TU Delft;
• Terence Love, Dr. (Eng. Des.), Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia, Lancaster University, and IADE, Lisbon.
• Peter-Paul Verbeek, Prof. of Philosophy, University of Twente;
• Pieter Vermaas, Dr., Dept. of Philosophy, TU Delft.

Visit the conference webpage: http://www.dkds.dk/Forskning/Projekter/CEPHAD/events/Cephad2010.

Pub: CONTEMPORARY AESTHETICS (2009).

Vol. 7.

• Editorial
• Notices
• Recent Publications
• Ossi Naukkarinen Integrative and Disintegrative Art
• Pauliina Rautio On Hanging Laundry: The Place of Beauty in Managing Everyday Life
• Craig Derksen and Darren Hudson Hick Performance Hero
• John Carvalho Thinking, the Unconscious and Film
• Jonathan A. Neufeld Musical Formalism and Political Performances
• Christy Mag Uidhir Unlimited Additions to Limited Editions
• Jukka Mikkonen Intentions and Interpretations: Philosophical Fiction as Conversation
• Yves Millet The Sensory Intention -- Art, Motif, and Motivation: A Comparative Approach

Special Volume 2: Aesthetics and Race: New Philosophical Perspectives

• Edited with an introduction by Monique Roelofs
• Monique Roelofs Introduction

I. Looks and Images

• Ronald Sundstrom Mixed-Race Looks
• Mariana Ortega Othering the Other: the Spectacle of Katrina for our Racial Entertainment Pleasure

II. Framing Encounters

• Monique Roelofs Sensation as Civilization: Reading/Riding the Taxicab
• Mickaella Perina Encountering the Other: Aesthetics, Race and Relationality

III. The Global and the Cosmopolitan

• Nalini Bhushan Toward a Development of a Cosmopolitan Aesthetic
• Falguni A. Sheth The Hijab and the Sari: The Strange and the Sexy between Colonialism and Global Capitalism

IV. Taste

• Robin James In but not of, of but not in: On Taste, Hipness, and White Embodiment
• Mariángeles Soto-Díaz The Divine Geometry of Chocolate: Artist's Essay

V. Ethics and Politics

• Paul C. Taylor The Last King of Scotland or the Last N----r on Earth? The Ethics of Race on Film
• Crispin Sartwell Red, Gold, Black, and Green: Black Nationalist Aesthetics
• Namita Goswami The Empire Sings Back: Aesthetics, Politics, and Postcolonial Whimsy

Visit the journal homepage here: http://www.contempaesthetics.org/index.html.

"Situated Selves: Phenomenology, Law and Aesthetics," Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, October 30-31, 2009.

This conference will bring together researchers in phenomenology, law and contract theory and philosophy of art to discuss how a phenomenological concept of the subject may alter our approach to politics, law and art appreciation. Each area - subjectivity and consciousness, political philosophy, social contract theory and aesthetics - has benefited from insights gleaned from thinking of the self and object as a synthetic unity. The benefits gained from such philosophical analysis have been enhanced by the fruitful dialogue with feminism over issues such as objectivity, realism, perception and power. The aim of the conference is to continue with this dialogue in a productive and constructive fashion and to clarify a number of conceptual problems in these areas of practical concern. This conference is a celebration of the work of Christine Battersby and is supported by the European Journal of Philosophy, the Society of Women in Philosophy and the University of Liverpool. Confirmed speakers include: Christine Battersby; Rosemary Betterton; Joanna Hodge; Kimberly Hutchings; Rachel Jones; Diane Morgan; Janice Richardson; Stella Sandford; Linnell Secomb; Margrit Shildrick; and Alison Stone. Registration fee: £40. Bursaries available. Deadline for abstracts: Friday September 4th. E-mail: philosophyconference@liv.ac.uk Contact: g.howie@liv.ac.uk or M.Shildrick@liv.ac.uk

Scruton, Roger. "Beauty and Desecration." CITY JOURNAL (Spring 2009).

At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form. And no Romantic painter, musician, or writer would have denied that beauty was the final purpose of his art. At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes. Indeed, there arose a widespread suspicion of beauty as next in line to kitsch—something too sweet and inoffensive for the serious modern artist to pursue. In a seminal essay—“Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review in 1939—critic Clement Greenberg starkly contrasted the avant-garde of his day with the figurative painting that competed with it, dismissing the latter (not just Norman Rockwell, but greats like Edward Hopper) as derivative and without lasting significance. The avant-garde, for Greenberg, promoted the disturbing and the provocative over the soothing and the decorative, and that was why we should admire it. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_beauty.html.

"Art, Aesthetics and the Sexual," University of Kent, May 21-22, 2009.

An international conference investigating the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pictures and films with sexual imagery and themes. Speakers and respondents include: David Davies (McGill University, Canada) Elizabeth Cowie (University of Kent, UK) Susan Dwyer (University of Maryland, USA) Jerrold Levinson (University of Maryland, USA) Alex Neill (University of Southampton, UK) Michael Newall (University of Kent, UK) Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University, UK) Murray Smith (University of Kent, UK) Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex, UK) Cain Todd (Lancaster University, UK). The conference programme and registration form are now available at: http://www.aesthetics-research.org/.

Annual Conference, British Society of Aesthetics, St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, September 5-7, 2008.

Guest Speakers:

• Stephen Davies (University of Auckland) “Why Art Cannot be a Spandrel”
• Alexander Nehamas (Princeton University)"Because It Was He, Because It Was I: Aesthetics and the Good of Friendship"
• Berys Gaut (University of St. Andrews) “Interactive Storytelling and Computer Games”
• Hannah Ginsborg (UC, Berkeley) “Rule-Following and Aesthetic Objectivity”

This year's William Empson lecture will be given by Jonathan Jones (The Guardian) "Painting and the Decline of Magic: Artists, Shamans and Art Factories"

Further information is here: http://www.british-aesthetics.org/conference2008.aspx.

"Aesthetics and Contemporary Art," Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Middlesex University, March 13-14, 2008.

An international interdisciplinary conference organized by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Middlesex University, London in collaboration with the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits’ (CRC 626), Free University Berlin, and supported by the British Academy. Advance Registration only:

• Two day registration: £48 waged, £25 students (£15 CRMEP students) - includes refreshments, lunches andreception.
• One day registration (subject to availability): £30 waged, £15 students (£10 CRMEP students).

Torn between a revival of the discourse of aesthetics and the persistence of conceptualism, critical writing about contemporary art has once again come to focus on differing views of its aesthetic dimension. The context and character of these debates has, however, shifted markedly from the 1960s, with changes in art practices, institutions, political contexts, and theoretical paradigms – and in particular, with the global extension of the Western artworld since 1989. This conference will reconsider the place of the aesthetic in contemporary art, in the broadest of ways, with reference to the topics of four plenary panels:

• Sensate Thinking: Aesthetics, Art, Ontology
• The Dissolution of Artistic Limits: Objects, Events, Ideas
• Aesthetics of Post-Autonomy: Institution, Collaboration, Participation
• Exhibition-Value: Aesthetics of Curation in a Global Artworld

Keynotes:

• Luis Camnitzer, artist and writer; Professor Emeritus of Art, State University of New York, Old Westbury; author of Conceptualism in Latin American Art (University of Texas Press, 2007).
• Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden and Charles Harrison), group of artists and writers, since 1968; see, for example, Art & Language in Practice, Vol.1. (Illustrated Handbook, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1999).

Plenary Panel Speakers: International:

• Dr Sebastian Egenhofer – Laurenz (Assistant) Professor for Contemporary Art, University of Basel
• Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Senior Research Fellow, Central St Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London; co-editor of Afterall; co-curator, 9th Istanbul Biennale, 2005
• Brian Holmes – writer and art critic (Paris); author of Hieroglyphs of the Future: Art and Politics in a Networked Era (Zagreb, 2002)
• Dr Pamela Lee – Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University; author of Object to be Destroyed: the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (MIT Press, 2000) and Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s (MIT Press, 2004)

CRC 626, Free University Berlin:

• Dr Susanne Leeb – Research Associate Project A7, Sub-project: Cartographic Models in Contemporary Art
• Prof. Christoph Menke – Head of Project C1 / Institute for Philosophy, University of Potsdam; author of The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida (MIT Press, 1998)
• Dr Juliane Rebentisch – Research Associate C1, Sub-project: Democracy and Theatre / Institute for Philosophy, University of Potsdam; author of Aesthetik der Installation (Suhrkamp, 2003)
• Dr Dorethea Von Hantelmann – Research Associate Project A7, Sub-project: Exemplary Experiences: Relations Between Work and Situation in Contemporary Art

CRMEP, London:

• Prof. Eric Alliez –Project: Undoing the Image
• Dr Stewart Martin – Project: Absolute art
• Prof. Peter Osborne –Director, CRMEP; Project: Art Against Aesthetics

CRMEP/CRC 626 liaison:

• Dr Armen Avanessian, Postdoctoral Fellow, CRC 626
• Luke Skrebowski, PhD candidate, CRMEP

For registration contact: Ray Brassier r.brassier@mdx.ac.uk

Further information is available at: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/crmep/EVENTS/AestheticsandContemporaryArt.htm.

Crace, John. "Is Criticism Dying, or is That Just Your View?" GUARDIAN December 18, 2007.

It's tough being a serious critic in these relativist times and many thought John Carey, emeritus Merton professor of English literature at Oxford University and distinguished literary critic, who has twice chaired the Booker prize judging committee, had done for the profession completely with his 2005 book, What Good Are the Arts?, in which he argued that there are no objective aesthetic standards. Two years on, Carey stands by what he wrote. "There are only opinions," he says, "albeit some more informed than others. The idea of evaulation - what I like is better than what you like and my feelings are more important than yours - is just illogical. You cannot know the state of another person's consciousness, so you can't make those judgments. I also got taken to task for apparently suggesting that literature was different - that it responded to the rationality of criticism in a way that no other art form did. But I never said any such thing. I made it clear that my ideas on literature were mine alone, and that I was writing from a personal perspective." None of this went uncontested by other academics and one of the first out of the blocks was Justin O'Connor, chair of cultural industries at Leeds University, with a lengthy critique in the journal Critical Quarterly. "There is clearly a hierarchy of the good and not so good in the arts," he insists, "and it's established by the critics. People's everyday experience leads them to make judgments, and together we make collective judgments. Pure relativism is absurd; regardless of whether you like Ian McEwan's novels, you have to accept that his judgments on literature carry more weight, simply because he is a practitioner, engaging with writing every day. . . . Read the rest of the article here: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2228866,00.html.

Mirza, Munira. "Is Modern Art a Left-Wing Conspiracy?" SPIKED November 22, 2007.

Is all modern art left-wing, as they suggest? To answer this, you’d have to work out what is meant by left-wing (or right-wing for that matter) which is an increasingly difficult thing to do these days. Calling someone left- or right-wing used to be a pretty good indication of where they stood on the big political issues of the day. For the 200 years between the French Revolution of 1789 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, left and right were shorthand labels for showing ‘whose side you were on’ – whether it was at the barricades or the picket line. But today, do these terms have the same instructive value? US President George W Bush is sometimes described as the leader of a radical right-wing government, but in what sense is this true? In 2002, he controversially introduced protection tariffs on steel imports to save the skins of domestic producers – so he is not exactly a rabid proponent of the free market. Maybe, then, he is a hawk when it comes to international affairs because he believed in America’s role in effecting regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, if this is right-wing, where does that leave Bill Clinton, his predecessor, who used similar arguments to justify the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia (only he used the term ‘humanitarian intervention’)? One could go on. Is free speech a left- or right-wing principle? For all their talk of freedom and challenging orthodoxy, we know there are plenty of academics on the left who have campaigned for ‘no platform’ policies in universities. Are they more or less left-wing than Mary Whitehouse, the Christian campaigner who demanded that certain things on television were too offensive for the British public to handle and required government censorship? And what about green politics? Even trendy left-wing supporters of organic food, who are vitriolic in their hatred for Tesco, can be embarrassed to find themselves in bed with aristocrats who believe in the purity of the land and subordination of man to nature. Sustainability - the red-green slogan of choice - is about slow, manageable change. It’s hardly the credo for revolution. So, the first point to make is that we should recognise that when we use the terms left and right, we’re not really referring to political categories, so much as badges of honour that we parade around. Or else, they are terms of abuse, to dismiss someone’s arguments and avoid examining their ideas properly. Many people cling to them for emotional comfort at a time when the sea of ideology is confusing and uncertain. . . . Read the entire article here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4105.