Lilian Munk Rösing

(Copenhagen University)

”The Hysteric’s Guide to Pixar”

New Lacanians such as Slavoj Žižek have turned psychoanalysis into cultural, aesthetical and political criticism, thereby indicating that none of those fields can do without a universalist and existential perspective. Artistic as well as popular films play an ambiguous role in this criticism, both being its target and bearing witness to psychoanalytical truth. During more than a decade Pixar Studio has provided us with animation films that may seem products of culture industry as well as works of art, confirming late capitalist ideology as well as questioning it, addressing the universal individual as well as interpellating the consumer of culture. Through a Lacanian analysis of Toy Story 1 & 2, this talk will probe into the function of cinema between art and ideology.

Andreas Wolfsteiner

(Freie Universität Berlin)

“Politics of Knowledge and Aesthetic Interrelations in Science, Art and Technology

by the Example of the Historical Avant-garde”

The vital question in this talk concerns the ways in which knowledge production itself is linked to the establishment of epistemological politics – in the sense of purposeful limitations of gaze. Furthermore, how are these politics of knowledge connected to a not-intentional occurrence of a specific performativity as cultural as well as corporeal knowledge, which Marcel Mauss termed “les techniques du corps”? Against the backdrop of radically shifting processes in industrial production and economy, two focal points of the avant-garde movements at the beginning of the 20^th century come in sight: (1) the fundamental questioning of a “knowledge surrounded by stage paravents” (Ernst Bloch; referring to the blockheadedness of natural sciences) and (2) the instrumentalisation of chance (as an aisthetic motor of a profoundly disturbed political public between the industrial and informational era).

Despite iconoclastic and luddistic tendencies, a certain experimental quality of aesthetic production in the histocial avant-garde is based on early modern conceptions, models and methods of knowledge production. Paradoxically, on the one side, the avant-garde drafts of experimentality are based on the metaphysicity of “wonder” and the creation of “spectacularity” in the 17^th century, as well as, on the other side, on eco-monistic fictions of a world-rationale within the so called “developmental reasoning” (Entwicklungsdenken): a seminal, though irrational attempt to “unriddle the world” (Ernst Haeckel’s “The Riddles of the Universe” in 1899).

In this respect, several avant-garde projects – seen as intersections between practices of sceptical aesthetic riddling in the arts, and traditions of riddled scepticism in natural philosophy – constitute an ideal vanishing point for a trans-historical research on the interrelations of diverse cultures of performativity in art, science and politics.

Maggie Humm

(University of East London)

“Virginia Woolf and Aesthetics”

The paper offers an intellectual and aesthetic framework for the writings of Virginia Woolf’s. Recent interdisciplinary work on Woolf shows how Woolf’s creation of modern identities is caught up in the inter-relationships between the arts and in Bloomsbury’s re-thinking of aesthetic theories. Post-impressionism was a preoccupation of the Bloomsbury group in the 1910s and had a profound influence on Woolf’s ideas and writings on art. Later, in her essays of the 1920s, and also throughout her novels, Woolf is preoccupied with questions about the nature of art in relation to society.

Woolf’s aesthetic theories developed in relation to early twentieth-century developments in the arts, including exhibitions, gallery acquisitions, and art publishing. The ideas of early twentieth-century philosophers and aestheticians also had an important impact on Woolf’s work and on her ideas about artistic ethics. Woolf’s aesthetics also drew on the politics of suffrage campaigns, and racial performances.

The paper will describe the art world of the early twentieth-century, and will touch on Woolf’s aesthetics of gender in The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando, focusing on Woolf’s radical reframing of politics in Three Guineas by means of a new photographic aesthetic.

By situating Woolf in the context of contemporary artistic theories this paper assesses the uniqueness of Woolf’s aesthetics and her unique contribution to a political aesthetic.

Suggested Readings (a selection from):

Woolf, Virginia (1975) ‘The Artist and Politics’, The Moment and Other Essays, San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, pp. 225-228.

Woolf, Virginia (any edition containing the inserted photographs) Three Guineas (section one).

Woolf, Virginia (any edition) To the Lighthouse.

Woolf, Virginia (any edition) Walter Sickert: A Conversation

Henning Laugerud

(University of Bergen)

“The Reformed Eye. The Reformation and the Optics of Iconoclasm”

Iconoclasm, of all kinds one might say, is in a broad sense a question of representation and authority. As such it can be taken as an exemplum “where art intersects with the political”.

In this paper I will take as my historical point of departure the iconoclastic actions and ideologies of the revolutionary reformers of 16^th and 17^th Century Europe. Iconoclasm can be seen as a visual rhetorical strategy to define and implement a new and revolutionary religious ideology. My argument will be that it expresses a kind of “non-visual visuality”, or a “visuality by negation”. Without images, there would be no images to destroy. But this revolutionry religious movement is not only destroying but also creates a new kind of visuality or visual argument.

Paradoxically iconoclasm and this “reformation of the eye” were deeply rooted in medieval optics, theories of perception and theory of knowledge. And in this perspective it not only intersects with the political, but also the scientific, where religion and science are interconnected and where science is still art.

Siri Meyer

(Universitetet i Bergen - University of Bergen)

“Visuell makt. Bildet som politisk aktør”

Hva gir et bilde politisk kraft? Kan politikken representeres? Mange kunstnere har ment det. Men kunstnere kan også agere politisk ved hjelp av andre estetiske strategier. Det ser vi blant annet hos Anselm Kiefer. I hans malerier må vi søke det politiske, ikke i det som avbildes, men i bildenes effekt på betrakteren. Ved hjelp av diktet Dødsfuge skal vi arbeide frem et melankolibegrep, som kan brukes for å beskrive denne affektive virkningen. Da vil vi oppdage at det å se også kan involvere kroppen.

“Visual Power. The Image as Political Agency”

What endows the image with political power? Can politics be represented? Many artists have been of that opinion. However, artists are also able to act politically by means of other aesthetic strategies. This can be witnessed in Anselm Kiefer. In his paintings we have to search for the political – not in that which is depicted but in the effect of the images on the viewer. By way of the poem “Death Fugue” (Paul Celan) my talk will help us arrive at a notion of melancholy that enables us to describe this affective effect. We will then realize that the phenomenon of looking also involves the body.

Simon Critchley

(The New School, New York City)

“Aesthetics, Religion and Politics in Relation to Contemporary Retrievals of St. Paul”

'in this paper, i will take up the return to st paul that can be found in a number of prominent contemporary philosophers (agamben, badiou and taubes) and look in particular at the intensely political paul that has emerged in these readings. i will try and assess why the return to paul has become so urgent at the present time and seek to identify the problem for which paul is the solution (the question of ethical and political motivation in the generalized demotivated context of contemporary liberal democracy). in addition, i will look at the aesthetic dimensions of paul’s epistles as they are addressed by heidegger in his 1920-21 lecture course on the 'phenomenology of religious life'. a constant concern in this paper will be the possibility meaning of faith and fidelity in contemporary readings of paul and their relation to law'