THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY
CONFERENCE AND ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
30th March - 1st April, 2012
To register please contact Julia Jansen: j.jansen@ucc.ie
PHENOMENOLOGY, AESTHETICS AND THE ARTS
Joint Conference of The Irish Phenomenological Circle & The British Society for Phenomenology University College Cork, Ireland,
30 March - 1 April 2012
Link: www.phenomenology.ie/conference2012
Phenomenology has always been closely associated with aesthetics and the arts. Even Husserl, who conceives phenomenology 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, Arendt and Nancy 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.
Friday
10.00 am BSP Executive Meeting
11.45 am IPC Executive Meeting
13.30 pm The Wolfe Mays Memorial Lecture
Gary Shapiro (Richmond University, USA)
Geoaesthetics: Rethinking the Picturesque
15.15 pm Ann van Leeuwen & Cliff Borress
(Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastrict, Netherlands)
Joost Schmidt: A Phenomenological Approach to
Photographic Meaning
17.00 pm Adam Loughnane (University College, Cork, Ireland)
Religious and Perceptual Faith in Nishida and
Merleau-Ponty
19.30 pm Conference Dinner
Saturday
10.00 am Cecilia Sjoeholm (Sodertorn University, Sweden)
An Aesthetics of 'Realness': Hannah Arendt and the
Work of Art
11.45 am Elisa Caldarola (University of Padua, Italy)
Abstract Painting and the Question of Pictorial
Representation: Relevance and Limits of Some
Phenomenological Insights
13.15 pm Lunch
14.00 pm BSP AGM
15.15 pm Jenny Judge (University of Cambridge, UK)
Electronic Musical Performance and the Phenomenology
of Affordances: Towards an Aesthetics of Digital Music
16.00 pm Paul Crowther (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Phenomenology of Art and Vision - the God in Art
17.45 pm Rudi Visker (University of Leuven, Belgium)
Art and Junk: Heideggar on Transition
20.00 pm Wine Reception
Sunday
10.00 am Joanna Hodge (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Jean Luc Nancy: Excription on the Edge of Sense
11.45 am Stephen Cadwell (University College, Dublin)
Invesigating Beauty in Husserl's Letter to Hoffmannsthal
12.45 pm Jessica Wiskus (Duquesne University, USA)
The Rhythm of Thought: Cezanne, Proust and Claudel after
Merleau-Ponty
14:15 pm IPC General Meeting
BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY
