Monday, August 28, 2017
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Conference Report 2017: Aesthetic Foundations
Conference Report
Aesthetic
Foundations, May 19-21, 2017
Wassard
Elea,
the refugium for artists and scholars, held its VIIth
International Wassard Elea Symposium,
in Ascea, focused on the theme of Aesthetic Foundations. The
contemporary diversification of aesthetics as applied to sport, film,
video games, food, and so on, has involved a confident and facile use
of such notions as aesthetic experience, aesthetic value, aesthetic
judgement and aesthetic pleasure. But this use in fact often belies
confusion about what these terms mean, or what we mean when we use
them. The question of what makes any kind of encounter or object a
particularly aesthetic one cuts to the heart of the discipline at its
most complex. This year’s symposium was dedicated to the analysis
of some core problems in aesthetics, such as the nature of aesthetic
experience, the link between the aesthetic and pleasure, the kinds of
objects that can rightly be called aesthetic, as well as the modality
of aesthetic judgements.
With
two intensive all-day sessions, the symposium was able to accommodate
eight presentations with commentaries and twelve discussants, coming
from Taiwan, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Sweden, USA and Canada. A range
of approaches to the theme were represented, from a conceptual
analysis of the role of verdictive judgments in artistic appreciation
to a Nietzschean challenge to the primacy of pleasure in aesthetic
encounters. A number of papers sought to clarify the nature of
aesthetic experience, as, for instance, being characterized by
genuineness and authenticity; as being educative or formative at its
core; as being fundamentally interpretive; or as leading to harmony
and unity on a Deweyan model. As to what objects can be said to be
aesthetic, the range of responses was from (a) anything, to (b) works
of art only, and (c) design in particular. Design, it was suggested,
can best illustrate how aesthetic categories have changed due to
contemporary changes in production and media culture. A defense of
Adorno argued that only works of art are aesthetic objects, and
moreover that ugly art has an important role to play in social and
political critique. The issue of art’s autonomy or heteronomy, and
the distinction between aesthetic and artistic values produced lively
and, we hope, fruitful discussion for all participants.
The
organizers would like to thank all those who submitted papers, and to
the symposium’s contributors, for a successful event. Proceedings
of the symposium have been published in Wassard
Elea Rivista,
IV, nos. 3, 4, and V,1. The theme for the VIIIth
International Wassard Elea Symposium
is tentatively entitled “Taste, Bad Taste and Tastelessness”. A
call for papers is expected in the fall.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
