Organisers: Professor Andy Hamilton, Bayley Moreton, Durham University

Programme

Andy Hamilton: introduction to workshop Politics and Aesthetics

Gerry Hemingway and Izumi Kimura: ‘Our differentiations, definitions, and relation to art and entertainment and what we view as the relation between these two terms’

Kathrine Cuccuru: ‘Inventing the Vulgar: How eighteenth-century theories of taste turned us all into snobs’

A performance from Aruán Ortiz and interview

Ruby Main: ‘Art Without Themes? Artistic Responsibilities in Narrative Film and Prestige Television’

Jeremy Adamson: ‘The Kinetic Art and Kinetic Films of Len Lye, Robert Breer and Walerian Borowczyk’

Denise Ho: ‘Worlds of Aesthetic Experiences: Dewey, Heidegger, and Making One’s Home in the Role-Playing Video Game’

Report

On the 5^th of October at Newcastle’s Literary and Philosophical Society, participants were invited to speak on the relationship between art, entertainment and politics before their peers and members of the public. The workshop ran smoothly, and all speakers listed above were able to attend in person.

The day began with an introduction from Professor Andy Hamilton (Durham) welcoming participants and discussing the themes of the workshop. The first presentation from Gerry Hemingway and Izumi Kimura offered a stimulating discussion of their attitudes to performance, as improvising musicians. Hemingway was keen to engage with the responses of students in the audience in particular, and they offered insights to the aesthetics of improvisation based on their experience as collaborators in the art. Katherine Cuccuru then led a discussion surrounding the issues of snobbery in aesthetic theory, specifically pertaining to aesthetic valuation and aesthetic appreciation. Cuccuru actively invited audience members to ponder the definition of snobbery in an aesthetic context, revealing the underlying class-based hierarchies of valuing baked into our perception of art. Following this she posited the idea of vulgarity creating a false dichotomy between what is valuable as art and the uncultivated, socially unacceptable or indecent. Arguing this dichotomy results in the enforcement of having a lower class excluded from the art world.

Stopping halfway for lunch, the workshop participants and audience members were invited to watch a live performance by Cuban jazz pianist Aruán Ortiz followed by an interview discussing the creative process interspersed with audience questions.

After lunch Ruby Main discussed the idea of themes in film and prestige television. This began with quotes from famous directors shirking the responsibility for themes and thematic content, beliefs ranged from considering themes puerile to the responsibility being on the audience to thematise content themselves. Main went on to argue that themes are an essential element of cinematic language and even if the artist opts out of the conscious choice to develop themes, they still have responsibility to consider them as an inevitable component of their artistic creation. This led to an interesting discussion on the content of the presentation but also on the definition and evolution of prestige television. Following this, Jeremy Adamson presented on Kinetic Art and Kinetic Films from artists Len Lye, Robert Breer and Walerian Borowczyk. This involved presentation and analysis of short clips ranging from adverts to videos of kinetic art. Jeremy’s expertise gave the audience deep insight into these artists and led to interesting questions on their lives and works.

The final presentation by Denise Ho explored Dewey and Heidegger’s respective concepts of ‘inhabitation’ and ‘dwelling’ utilising the role-playing video game as an elucidatory vehicle. They established the effective replication of lived experience found in the complex interactive virtual environments of role-playing video games before detailing the process of making-oneself-at-home. This innovative analysis using the Dewey-Heidegger approach gave rise to rigorous questioning with audience members commenting that the presentation shows the aesthetics of video games in a new light and opens the door to future research into this area.

The organisers are grateful to the ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ for sponsoring this event, to the speakers for their excellent presentations, and to the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society for hosting us.

BPA/SWiP statement

All participants in the workshop were billed equally on all publicity, and no personal titles or institutions were listed. Formal invitations to speakers gave them opportunity to declare requirements for childcare or babysitting facilities, and we endeavoured to make suitable arrangements where necessary. Speakers were diverse in profession and included writers, academics, musicians, artists, entertainers and stand-up comedians. Of the 7 speakers, 4 (57%) were women.

Aesthetics Today

All in all, the conference met its goal of fostering debate on the state of contemporary aesthetics via the discussion of two recent book publications by members of the University of Kent’s Aesthetics Research Centre: Hans Maes’ Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, and Murray Smith’s Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (both published by Oxford University Press). All planned invited speakers were able to attend. On the first day, Derek Matravers (OU and Cambridge) and Dawn Wilson (Hull), along with local speaker Michael Newall, commented on Maes’ volume, while Catharine Abell (Manchester), Jerrold Levinson (Maryland), and local speaker Dominic Topp commented on Smith’s work. On the second day, Ryan Doran (Antwerp and Sheffield) delivered a paper on ‘Things rank and gross in nature: a sentimentalist account of ugliness,’ while Alaina Schempp (Kent) spoke on the ‘Aesthetics of time in the cinema.’

Aesthetics Today

The event was rounded out by a roundtable on early career publishing. Ryan Doran, representing the ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ-sponsored journal Debates in Aesthetics, was joined by Alex Marlow-Mann (Kent), chief editor of the journal Film Studies.

Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Organisers: Louise Hanson, Daan Evers

The conference took place on the weekend of 9th-10th August 2014 at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. There were nine speakers, who gave talks on a variety of issues involving comparisons between aesthetics and metaethics. The speakers were: Crispin Wright (NYU), Max Kölbel (Barcelona), Anna Bergqvist (MMU), Louise Hanson (Cambridge), Rob Hopkins (NYU), Daan Evers (Groningen), Simon Kirchin (Kent), Paul Boghossian (NYU), and Jessica Wilson (Toronto). Topics covered included the applicability of motivational internalism to aesthetics, and whether aesthetic judgements are more apt for an internalist treatment than moral ones (Kirchin), the applicability of relativism to aesthetics (Wright, Evers, Kölbel), the nature of aesthetic reasons (Hopkins), objectivity (Bergqvist), metaphysical emergence and its applicability to aesthetic objects (Wilson), and the tenability of the aesthetic counterpart of robust moral realism (Hanson).

The conference was well-attended. There were forty-one attendees, including paying attendees, speakers, and colleagues who had volunteered to help out in exchange for free attendance, as well as the two organisers.

A major aim of the conference was to foster dialogue between aestheticians and philosophers working in other areas in which questions of realism and antirealism are pursued. To that end, the majority of the speakers were philosophers known for work outside of aesthetics, mainly metaethics, but among attendees, aesthetics was well represented. Discussion in the sessions was lively and there were many fruitful conversations in the informal parts of the conference too.

We are currently in conversation with Oxford University Press about producing an edited anthology with the papers from the conference, as well as some extra papers. In addition to the conference speakers, the following have agreed to contribute papers: Simon Blackburn (Cambridge), Josh Parsons (Oxford), and Derek Matravers (Open University).

Louise Hanson
Daan Evers