CFR: Aesthetics, Technique and Emotion

Summer school: Aesthetics, Technique and Emotion, Lake Como School of Advanced Studies, 7-10 June 2021 (https://aeat.lakecomoschool.org/)

What is aesthetics, and what value can the question of aesthetics have today? The school, organized by the University of Milan in collaboration with the European Seminar of Aesthetics – an international network of academics and researchers founded in 2014 with the aim of fostering critical debate on key topics in aesthetics (https://sites.unimi.it/eu_aesthetics/about/) – intends to address these and other questions concerning the relationship between aesthetics, art and technique. In fact, many changes are occurring nowadays in our aesthetic perception of the world. The boundaries of art are becoming more and more difficult to determine – considering for example the new challenges posed by art created by (or through) artificial intelligence, or the new tools offered by virtual reality. Moreover, a new aesthetic value is increasingly attributed to many aspects of our everyday life, like the images that we exchange daily via mobile phones and websites.

In the face of these innovations, what tools for thinking can be provided by aesthetics, a discipline that was born in the eighteenth century, in a necessarily very different cultural environment? What role can categories such as beauty, ugliness, sublime, kitsch, or concepts such as genius and taste play today? How is it possible to rethink our idea of the art and the artist, or the relationship between the artists and the techniques used in their works?

The School aims to involve students and researchers from different backgrounds in the discussion. The morning talks will be given by international experts, while the afternoon will be dedicated to one more speaker and to the discussion of the day’s topics.

The School is directed toward PhD students, advanced master students and postdocs. In order to participate, it is necessary to have a bachelor degree (three years). It is not necessary for participants to have studied philosophy; other fields are also welcome, since the philosophical questions will be raised through an interdisciplinary approach, involving performative arts, technology, figurative arts etc.

Participants will have the opportunity to prepare a short talk (5 minutes, 1 page length) and later elaborate upon it in a paper. The best papers will be selected to be published in a special issue of the journal “Itinera” (https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/itinera).

Due to the pandemic situation, we decided to plan the school fully online. Registration will be free of charge, but mandatory for all participants. A limited number of students will be selected. 

All details on the website: https://aeat.lakecomoschool.org/

For any information: [email protected]