Saturday 1 April 2023
Description
This one-day workshop at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, brought together leading philosophers of art and art theorists to focus on major works of twenty-first century contemporary art. The aim of the workshop was not to motivate general philosophical claims about the nature of contemporary art, but to examine a single work (or a short run of works) by a particular artist and to consider this in light of the broader issues of philosophical interest that these works might be thought to raise. The idea behind the event as a whole was that close attention to an individual work of art can be both critically and philosophically illuminating, and that this provides an alternative model for substantive work in aesthetics, work that is not only philosophically serious but critically and historically sensitive.
The workshop was a collaboration between Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford, the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, and the London Aesthetics Forum. It was generously supported by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics.
The organisers were Diarmuid Costello (Warwick) and Jason Gaiger (Oxford). The full list of speakers and papers titles is below. Papers were delivered in pairs between refreshment and/or lunch break(s) and all speakers, whether junior or senior, male or female, were given equal time and billing.
Jason Gaiger (University of Oxford): ‘Parthood and Composition: Pierre
Huyghe’s Untilled (2011-12)’
Elisa Caldarola (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice): ‘Installation, Interaction,
Imagination: Katharina Grosse’s ‘It Wasn’t Us’ (2020-2021)’
Diarmuid Costello (University of Warwick) and Katrin Flikschuh (LSE): ‘Felix Eats Garri & Egusi Soup (2014-16): Zina Saro-Wiwa and Metaphysics of Habitat’
Vid Simoniti (Liverpool University): ‘Art Beyond Human Agency: Maja Smrekar’s !brute_force’ (2019-20)’
Margaret Iversen (University of Essex): ‘Camera Consciousness: On Susan
Morris’s Concordances and Silence (On Prepared Loom) (2021)’
Peter Geimer (Deutches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris): ‘The Colours of
History. On Harun Farocki’s Respite (2007)’
The event was very well attended by 80+ delegates, and lasted one full day, followed by a dinner for the speakers. Informal feedback received on the day was very positive, from both delegates and speakers.