CFP: CFP - Philosophy and Contemporary Art - Philosophia Special Issue

CFP - Philosophy and Contemporary Art - Philosophia Special Issue

Invited contributors: Diarmuid Costello (University of Warwick), John Kulvicki (Dartmouth College), Sherri Irvin (University of Oklahoma), Enrico Terrone (University of Genoa)

Guest editors: Elisa Caldarola (University of Turin) and Elsa Saliba (University of Genoa)

Philosophiainvites submissions for a Special Issue on Philosophy and Contemporary Art.

The term contemporary art can be used in several ways. It may refer to art produced in the same historical period as the speaker. It may also refer more narrowly to art that engages with themes and artistic strategies characteristic of a particular contemporary cultural context. In another important sense, it refers to artistic production in the plastic arts (broadly understood) from the 1960s to the present within the global high-art world.

On this latter use, contemporary art does not simply mean recent art. It names a historically extended field of artistic practices that artists, critics, curators, and institutions continue to treat as belonging together. This raises a question that deserves philosophical attention: what, if anything, unifies works produced in the last decade with works produced several generations ago?

One hypothesis motivating this Special Issue is that contemporary art is unified, at least in part, by the way its characteristic practices put pressure on central philosophical categories. These practices do not merely invite philosophical interpretation; through their own modes of production and reception, they challenge assumptions that have traditionally structured philosophical reflection on art.

Installations and site-specific works challenge the idea that visual artworks are self-contained physical objects. Participatory works complicate the distinction between artist and public. Delegated fabrication and AI-assisted production put pressure on familiar notions of authorship, intention, control, and responsibility. Performances known mainly through documentation raise questions about traces of, reconstruction of, and access to works. Conceptual and deliberately banal works challenge assumptions about aesthetic experience and appreciation. Political and socially engaged works test the boundary between artistic intervention, activism, public communication, manipulation, and propaganda.

On this view, the question of what contemporary art is and the question of why it matters philosophically are closely connected.

The aim of this Special Issue is to consolidate and structure philosophical work on contemporary art. Relevant discussions already exist across aesthetics and philosophy of art, ontology and metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of technology. Yet these debates remain fragmented and often develop independently of one another.

Questions about AI and authorship, for example, are closely connected to broader debates about distributed agency. Questions about performance and documentation intersect with debates about imagination and epistemology. Questions about political art connect with debates about propaganda, manipulation, nudging, and public reason. Bringing these discussions together may help identify common philosophical problems, clarify their interconnections, and advance a more unified understanding of the philosophical significance of contemporary art.

Submissions may address, among other topics:

·        the concept, scope, and unity of contemporary art;

·        the ontology and metaphysics of installations, conceptual works, participatory works, performances, and site-specific works;

·        the identity, boundaries, and persistence conditions of contemporary artworks;

·        authorship, intention, collaboration, control, responsibility, and distributed agency;

·        delegated fabrication, institutional mediation, audience participation, and spectatorship;

·        AI, Large Language Models, and artistic production;

·        documentation, traces, archives, and the reconstruction of performances through reasoning and imagination;

·        affective responses, introspection, imagination, and other forms of mental engagement with contemporary artworks;

·        the aesthetic significance of works that appear deliberately banal, aesthetically inert, or thematically insignificant;

·        how language figures in conceptual art and contemporary art;

·        political and socially engaged art, propaganda, activism, and public reasoning;

·        morally or politically defective artworks and their artistic or aesthetic value;

·        manipulation, affective mobilization, nudging, epistemically defective messages, and the epistemic role of art.

The issue welcomes contributions that address one or more of the above topics from the perspective of aesthetics and philosophy of art as well as from ontology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of technology. Papers may focus on particular artistic practices or bodies of work, but they should engage broader philosophical questions and be accessible to philosophers outside the author's immediate area of specialization.

Submission deadline:April 30, 2027

Submission guidelines:Manuscripts should be prepared for anonymous review and submitted through Philosophia's online submission system, selecting the Special Issue once available.

Length of papers: 8,000 to 9,000 words, font size 12, double spaced, (including references, footnotes, tables and figures). 

Philosophia’s submission guidelines are available at this link: https://link.springer.com/journal/11406/submission-guidelines#Instructions%20for%20Authors_Important%20Information%20on%20Manuscript%20Preparation%20and%20Submission

Inquiries to: elisa.caldarolaATunito.it and elsa.salibaATedu.unige.it