CFP: Special Issue of Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology (Vol. 4, No. 2, 2017)
Theme: Thinking Contemporary Art with Heidegger
Guest Editors: Jussi Backman (University of Jyväskylä), Harri Mäcklin (University of Helsinki), Raine Vasquez (University of Helsinki)
Submission Deadline: 31 May 2017
Send Submissions To: heidegger.contemporary.art@gmail.com
Submission Guidelines: here

Eighty years have passed since Heidegger’s 1935–36 lectures on The Origin of the Work of Art, which became his most famous and sustained reflection on art. Since then, the artworld has moved through modernism and postmodernism, on to what is now commonly referred to as ‘contemporaneity’. In spite of his momentous influence on philosophy of art, Heidegger’s relevance for contemporary art has been explored relatively little. Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology will dedicate a special issue in 2017 to contributions discussing this complex topic.

Is Heidegger’s ontology of the artwork, as presented in The Origin of the Work of Art, in his Nietzsche lectures, and elsewhere in his corpus, applicable to contemporary art – and if so, in what ways? How could new forms of art, such as digital art, be analysed from a Heideggerian perspective? How does contemporary art relate to the paradigms of the Western tradition of metaphysics as Heidegger understands it? Does contemporary art belong in ‘the domain of the pastry chef’ – as Heidegger provocatively suggested in 1935 – in the sense of being primarily oriented to subjective aesthetic experience, or is an ‘overcoming’ of traditional aesthetics already at work in contemporary art? Is contemporary art downright ‘destructive’, as Heidegger characterizes contemporary literature in a 1966 interview, and in what sense? How does the ‘contemporaneity’ of contemporary art relate to Heidegger’s view of the contemporary historical situation of the West between the end of metaphysics in Hegel and Nietzsche and the forthcoming ‘other beginning’ of Western thought?

The editors invite article manuscripts on these and other questions related to Heidegger and contemporary art. The submissions will go through a blind review process and a maximum of four submissions will be selected for publication by the guest editors. The maximum length of the manuscript is 8,000 words. Please follow the style guidelines of the journal:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rfap20&page=instructions.
The submissions should be sent to heidegger.contemporary.art@gmail.com by 31 May 2017 at the latest.