CFP: Rhythms of Artwork and Beyond: Humanity, Sociality, and Nature

We kindly invite Authors to submit proposals to a special issue of The Polish Journal of Aesthetics - "Rhythms of Artwork and Beyond: Humanity, Sociality, and Nature" Vol. 76 (1/2026), edited by Ineta Kivle (University of Latvia) and Maja Bjelica (Science and Research Centre Koper).

Submission deadline: 30 June, 2025

Since the late 1990s, the humanities and social sciences have been undergoing changes determined by the end of postmodernism and the beginning of the “post-human age.” The search for new philosophical and aesthetic theoretical approaches is driven by today's fluid and transformative processes occurring not just in art and society, but also impacting the inner constitution of each individual and our surrounding environments. A focus on rhythm offers a common dimension shared by art, humans, sociality, and nature.
This issue of The Polish Journal of Aesthetics aims to conduct transdisciplinary philosophical and aesthetic research and discover new overlapping horizons uniting different theoretical approaches to rhythms. This issue represents an innovative exploration of how ideas are transformed not just by the mind and rational thinking, but also by the rhythmic forces that shape art, human existence, and lived experiences. By inviting researchers across different disciplines to contribute to this volume, we aim to demonstrate that the field of aesthetics embraces interdisciplinary perspectives. It is up to each author to choose which paradigms of thinking to view the rhythms of art, humanity, nature, and sociality from a shared perspective.
The issue aims for a broad discourse binding aesthetics with metaphysics, ethics, analytics, philosophy, history, culture, technologies, and music. Life sciences are also invited to give their interdisciplinary contribution to the aesthetic study of rhythm.
The deconstruction of individuality in hypermodern times covers such topics as:
- Rhythms of individual life in the transformative processes of art and society,
- The power of nature’s rhythms from an aesthetic perspective,
- Rhythms between virtuality and reality,
- The transformation of artistic rhythms under the influence of technologies.
The issue aims to explore profound questions surrounding the nature and implications of rhythm: What is the essence of rhythm itself? How do the natural rhythms that govern human life differ from the rhythms found in art, constructed rationalities, and technologies? What alternate conceptions challenge the currently dominant metric paradigm of rhythm? How does the individual self exist amid the rhythms of technologies, reason, nature, and global processes? How does disruption of natural rhythms deform and transform human experience and being? How does our sense of individuality shift as human social positions change rhythmically? In what ways does the power of nature's rhythms impact the human world and artistic expression? How can art contribute to maintaining a rhythmic, healthy existence? How are humanity's bodily and rational dimensions transformed through the effects of changing rhythms? How does the revived analysis of rhythm concern the realms of aesthetics, ethics, politics, literature, and art? We welcome submissions that theoretically investigate these and related questions through diverse frameworks, expanding the discourse on the rhythms inherent in artworks and beyond
We also invite submissions not only from an academic perspective but also in the form of essays and reviews.

All Authors interested in contributing to this issue of The Polish Journal of Aesthetics are kindly requested to send full papers by submission page at the journal's website by June 30, 2025.  

We strongly urge all Authors to read the instructions (‘For Authors’) before the submission.   Welcome to visit our website at: http://pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/

Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Kind regards,

Ineta Kivle (University of Latvia)

Maja Bjelica (Science and Research Centre Koper)