Estetyka codzienności – estetyka spotkania

Author(s): Maria Korusiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

Everyday aesthetics is the umbrella term for trends in contemporary aesthetics which focus on everyday existence. Its specifics require changes and innovations in traditional aesthetic theories. Everyday aesthetics can be related to the so-called engaged aesthetics of Arnold Berleant: it takes into consideration such aspects of aesthetic experience as its emotional character, sensuality, directness, and its open “boundaries.” Everyday aesthetics covers the whole spectrum of the forms of aesthetic appreciation from disinterested contemplation to active participation founded on cooperation with the environment and the notion of aesthetic welfare.” Introducing the categories of respect, care and attentiveness toward objects, processes, and other – human and non-human – beings, everyday aesthetics can be viewed as the “aesthetics of encounter.” The text attempts to present and discuss its main premises.

CONCEPTUL MODERN DE INTERPRETARE. INTERPRETARE ÎN ARTA MUZICALĂ

Author(s): Alexandru Boboc / Language(s): Romanian,Moldavian Issue: 6/2019

The article begins with a short presentation of the modern concept of interpretation. Then, the author applies the concept of interpretation to describe the meaning of the musical interpretation.

Beauty and Morality at Immanuel Kant

Author(s): Claudia Buda / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This article presents an overview of Kant's agreements on beauty and morality. For Kant, beauty in general, whether it is the beauty of nature or the beauty of art, is called expression. It is true that there is no science of beauty, but only a critique of beauty, no beautiful science, but only beautiful art. A science of beauty would imply scientific determination, that is, the judgment of the beautiful would belong to science which is not possible. Kant asserts that the intellect proves, by the possibility of a priori laws, that we can know it only as a phenomenon and indicates an over-sensitive substrate that is indeterminate.

Уметничко дело у доба механичке репродукције

Author(s): Walter Benjamin / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 5/2012

Translated by Svetlana Mitić

Mi és a vadon

Author(s): Ágnes Kata Miklós / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 06/2020

Heller Ágnes évjárata

Author(s): Gábor Kelemen / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 3/2019

Poznámky k textu – Vnímání textu, (ne)porušení očekávání, recipient vs. autor

Author(s): Ondřej Krátký / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2020

The following paper is based on a broad understanding of communication (or the author-text-recipient relation) that considers as text basically anything that has been created within the framework of a cultural interaction by an author and that is perceived by a recipient. The first part of the paper introduces, explains and follows mostly cases in which the author’s violations of the recipient’s expectations have a communication value, i.e. provoke, in the recipient, a communication effect that matches the author’s intentions. In such cases, this effect results as a consequence of an (author-controlled) violation of the communication „cooperative“ principles. This, at the recipient’s end, translates into an event of expectancy violation. Each of such violations provokes an arousal in the recipient, which further motivates him/her to search for its cause. Finding this cause, and being “confronted” with the related violation pertaining to it with the norm equals, for the recipient, getting to the meaning of the text, or identifying its communication value etc. As part of the conclusion, a commented scheme is presented which offers a spectrum of possible communication outcomes “positioned” between the predictability of each textual element and the (author’s latent) stochasticity of choice. The effort to illustrate all the explained facts results, in the paper, in a rich set of examples stemming from miscellaneous spheres of human activity – from “high (artistic) styles” to rather day-to-day activities, to pop-culture. The objective is to show that the described principles, if not valid in general, permeate at least all forms of interaction.

Aesthetic Dividuations in a Globalized Art World

Author(s): Michaela Ott / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

As a professor of philosophy in the art academy of Hamburg, I deal with contemporary art practices; as a theorist of aesthetics I try to determine what kind of aesthetic and artistic developments seem to be significant for our times, and which kind of philosophical theories I can offer in order to better conceptualize and understand the given art productions. At the same time, I attempt to transcend contemporary tendencies and concepts and to foster students’ art practices in a way that makes them meaningful for the future. This lecture seeks to provide a possible interpretation of actual art practices in a globalized world, reflecting also on big art exhibitions such as Documenta 14 and on African films. It sketches a specific aesthetic program called Afropolitanism as an understanding which could be conceived of as paradigmatic for our globalized times. Afropolitanism is a term coined by the South African theorist Achille Mbembe in one of his 2010 book Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisé. Starting from there I want to offer a philosophical concept that goes far beyond the European context and hopes to provide a possible conceptual frame for a more complex understanding of the culturally and artistically entangled and hybridized expressions of our days, including those of human subjectivation. I call this concept dividuation as I have explained further in my book Dividuations: Theories of Participation, which was published in English in 2018.

Towards a Plural Aesthetic in the Maghreb

Author(s): Mounira Ben Mustapha Hachana / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

The study and interpretation of the art of the modern and contemporary Maghreb is a developing field, in terms of artistic production, exhibition, marketing, and theoretical discourse. In recent years, artists of North Africa and the Middle East have achieved high visibility on the international scene, even as they suffer from many lacks, including the structures of art production, and critical discourses, and theoretical approaches. The principal aim of this paper is to avoid the radar screen of the western world and to think about the specificity of this region, such as a possible world of contemporary art. We can consider these artists and artworks beyond the cliché image repertoires of terrorism and tourism, Orientalism, and clandestine migration that dominate most representations of the Maghreb. We want to explore visual art, and its dynamic, not by describing movements or putting together a chronology, but by guiding many reflections about the relation between theory and practice in this specific geographic area. This paper will address key points of the problems of terminology: the problematic use of such terms as Modern Islamic Art and the frequent application of the terms. Modern and Contemporary without sufficient acknowledgment of their contextual connotation. It will examine the recent developments in art practice in the Maghreb and its diaspora and their broader context, analyzing the impact of globalization and other transnational cultural and social links.

Introduction

Author(s): Lyida W. Muthuma / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

Modern Kenyan Identity: Crafting a Nation Through Monuments

Author(s): Lyida W. Muthuma / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

To define the identity of a modern African country, within the Eurocentric interpretiveframework, imposes creative limits. Therefore, this is an insider’s perspective of Kenyanidentity. It begins with a summary of modernism as the underpinning philosophy of variouscultural expressions. While pointing out the danger of assigning expressions of cultural identityto a state as opposed to a nation, the article surveys monuments in Nairobi. And it is withqualified confidence that modernist-looking monuments are considered cultural expressionsof Kenya; they are simply symbols that try to gather the peoples into a modern collective –with (un)certain success.The colonial authority assembled various monuments in an effort to imprint Britishidentity; these are not in the style of modernism, though they were erected when Europe wasexperiencing the culture of modernism. The epitome is the statue of King George V. Post-colonialmonuments, seeking to wipe off colonial identity, are also more classical and less modernist,bringing to the fore the paradox of a modern culture that does not employ a moderniststyle. Jomo Kenyatta’s statue in Nairobi’s City Square is the epitome of post-colonial monuments.Its mounting was the gesture par excellence of overthrowing British dominion. Theonly modernist monuments are those affiliated to President Daniel Moi. His regime had tofight to unite the citizens. A parallel is drawn between this political effort and the artistic styleof choice.A discussion of the non-prevalence of the modernist style in articulating modern identityfollows. And, in conclusion, the article points out that though both colonial and post-colonialmonuments are fabricated out of modern materials and techniques, they cannot betermed modernist works of art. Modernism, as a style that bespeaks a culture, is unavoidablyunderpinned on western cultures (European and American) of the 20th century.

Contemporary Aesthetics of the Akurino: A Religion or a Cultural Movement?

Author(s): Gitau Muthuma / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

This paper examines the aesthetics of the worship rituals, music, artifacts and theoral tradition of the Holy Ghost Church of East Africa, or Akurino religious sect, which is aunique blend of Christian religious practices and traditional African worship systems. Themain question here is whether the Akurino are a Christian religious sect or a cultural movement?The Akurino are significantly interesting due to the fact that they claim to be an indigenousAfrican Christian religion, among many such others. But the fact that they are mostlyfound in Central Kenya and the Rift Valley regions, and are confined among the Gikuyu peopleonly and have not attracted adherents from other segments of society, raises the questionas to whether they may not also be a cult or a cultural movement. The Akurino started appearingin the middle of the 1920s. They grew strictly out of indigenous leadership. Their firstgeneration membership came out of various missions as well as the unchurched populationthat followed Gikuyu traditional religion. The group was in its infancy and was functioning invarious parts of Gikuyu country, but had little influence with the general population, its appealbeing to such individuals as had been pronounced ‘sinners’ by missionaries, and to others whohad been cured of diseases.

Socio-Historical Context and Dematerialization of the Art Object

Author(s): Zoran Đureinović / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

The new socio-historical context of the world, multipolarity, the decentralizationand, above all, rapid technological development, inevitably led to a change in the way art isshaped. The new socio-historical context meant putting an end to the linear interpretationof art, often marking it as the end of art. The world is fragmenting; the traditional ways ofexpressing creativity have been exhausted and perfected technological production is takingover this function. Considering the existing attitudes about the end of art as we know it, wecould rather speak about the end of the material, i.e., the end of the art object, but not the endof the idea or the concept itself. Due to the newly emerged social context, the meaning of theartwork has shifted from the material, i.e., from the object to a discursive and abstract field. Inother words, the concept, idea, and theory are primary; they form the essence of the artwork,not the object itself. It is about the fact that the world we live in and the discourses – withinwhich artwork is created – have changed due to the aforementioned reasons, and accordingly,the design of the artwork has also changed. Conceptual artwork and related art practices arethe best examples of this. Art itself has become an object of enjoyment and contentment in theworld of a modern consumer society, globalization, complete commercialization, and popularculture, in which traditional artwork as an art object no longer exists. Instead, in the moderconsumer society, all is about experiencing a sensual and pleasant event, whether it is a touristvisit to a museum or attending an exhibition.

Book Review. Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018, 320 pp., ISBN 9781517903893

Author(s): Tatiana Prorokova / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

MINI ESEJI

Author(s): Milan Georges Burovac / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3-4/2020

Niko nije prorok u svom selu, prorok na delu. Nisam ni ja, tako mi svih ljutih rakija! Otišao sam da se smucam bo belom svetu, onako iz šale, onako zbog plate male. Tek po ulasku mi rekoše da Raj besplatan nije… Ma kakvi! Ima da se plati kada se pije. Kako su moji roditelji bili i opstali od vrlog šnajderskog zanata, morao sam da malo evrića skidam i sa njihovih plata. Gotovan, tako se u mom selu zove onaj koji nikada nije zadovoljan. Umetnik dakako nije, zato valjda i pije li pije.

Pragmatists on the Everyday Aesthetic Experience

Author(s): Alexander Krémer / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Although the first ‘pragmatist aesthetics’ was devised by John Dewey in his Art as Experience (1934), Richard Shusterman has been the only scholar to use the notion of “pragmatist aesthetics” in his Pragmatist Aesthetics (1992). In this paper, I show that Dewey already refuses the gap between the practices of the ‘artworld’ and that of everyday life. In Art as Experience, he criticizes the ‘museum conception’ of art to argue that some aesthetic experiences in our daily life have the same essential structure as the experience of art. While Rorty has revised Dewey’s basic premises, Shusterman has rather restated them. Since the end of the 1980s, he has started developing his own philosophical project, named ‘somaesthetics’. Shusterman’s somaesthetics does not simply incorporate many Deweyan views, but also develops them further. Accepting a Deweyan framework, Shusterman rejects the sharp dualism of the so-called “lower and higher levels of art”. What is more, he considers philosophy as an art of the living, embracing in somaesthetics the ancient Greek and Asian traditions.

Somaesthetics and Banality: A Reply to Kremer

Author(s): Jana Migašová / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This short paper is an attempt to intersect my reading of Alexander Kremer’s key ideas in his article Pragmatists on the Everyday Aesthetic Experience (2020) with my previous thoughts on banality as an aesthetic quality experienced by the modern subject in her everyday life. My contribution tries to interconnect key theoretical and artistic conceptions of banality (as discussed for example by Charles Baudelaire, Hannah Arendt, Marie Darrieussecq, Edward Keinholz) with Shusterman’s somaesthetics and subsequently to reveal another possibility of rethinking the relationship between aesthetics and ethics.

Living with Urban Everyday Technologies

Author(s): Sanna Lehtinen / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

New and complex technologies are exceedingly present and in widespread use in contemporary cities globally. The urban lifeworld is saturated with various applications of information and computing technologies, but also more rudimentary forms of technology construct and create the urban everyday life as we know it. Many forms of urban technologies are perceived first through their everyday aesthetic qualities: how they look, feel, sound, or are otherwise encountered within the streetscape. Philosophical aesthetics, however, has tended to overlook everyday technologies as a topic, often due to unquestioned ideas of how a city should ideally look and feel. Thus, a more realistic approach to contemporary cities is needed, in which the deep-seated role of technologies is recognized and the experiences related to their entangled uses become acknowledged. This paper brings together recent developments in urban aesthetics with some of the core ideas of postphenomenological approaches to new urban technologies.

Urban Technologies – The New Everydayness: A Reply to Lehtinen

Author(s): Sandra Zákutná / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This short paper is a reply to Sanna Lehtinen’s article Living with Urban Everyday Technologies whose aim is to introduce the complexity of the problem of everyday technologies in contemporary aesthetics. Thanks to most recent information, computing, and communication technologies, urban technologies have indeed become an indispensable part of human living standards. In connection with Lehtinen’s primary interest in visible technologies with invisible effects, my reply appeals to W. Welsch’s use of the term anaesthetics, which refers to the absence of the ability to feel, as a parallel to this group of technologies. The reply also emphasises that it is necessary to study urban technologies together with a focus on human privacy, social justice, and human wellbeing and that everyday aesthetics has to be ready to reflect on the extremely fast development of these technologies.

What Makes Things Banal

Author(s): Lukáš Makky / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In this paper, I investigate the origins of banality and the reasons why some phenomena appear banal to us. I discuss the issue by analysing three interrelated areas of aesthetic investigation: artworks, everyday objects, and banal things. By identifying the source of banality, my goal is to understand what makes banal things different from other kinds of things. I consider the following questions: 1) when, why, and how does an object become banal?; 2) what happens when something becomes banal?; 3) are banal things aesthetically appealing? Drawing on Wolfgang Welsch’s notion of anesthetization and Walter Benjamin’s account of aura, I argue that banality consists in the absence of both an ontological and an axiological character in objects, which makes them appear trivial or insignificant to us. I conclude by showing that although art, everydayness, and banality represent different aesthetic dimensions, objects constantly move from one of these dimensions to the other.