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