Aesthetics and Contemporary Art
An International Interdisciplinary Conference

Organized by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy
(CRMEP), Middlesex University, London in collaboration with the
Collaborative Research Centre „Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of
Artistic Limits” (CRC 626), Free University Berlin

13 & 14 March 2008
Drawing Room, Mansion Building
Trent Park Campus,
Middlesex University,
London N14 4YZ

Directions for getting to Trent Park available here

Torn between a revival of the discourse of aesthetics and the persistence
of conceptualism, critical writing about contemporary art has once again
come to focus on differing views of its aesthetic dimension. The context
and character of these debates has, however, shifted markedly from the
1960s, with changes in art practices, institutions, political contexts,
and theoretical paradigms - and in particular, with the global extension
of the Western artworld since 1989. This conference will reconsider the
place of the aesthetic in contemporary art, in the broadest of ways, with
reference to the topics of four plenary panels:

Sensate Thinking: Aesthetics, Art, Ontology

The Dissolution of Artistic Limits: Objects, Events, Ideas

Aesthetics of Post-Autonomy: Institution, Collaboration, Participation

Exhibition-Value: Aesthetics of Curation in a Global Artworld

Participants

Keynotes
Luis Camnitzer, artist and writer; Professor Emeritus of Art, State
University of New York, Old Westbury; author of Conceptualism in Latin
American Art University of Texas Press, 2007.

Jeff Wall, artist and writer; author of Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and
Interviews, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007. Tbc

Plenary Panel Speakers
International
Dr Sebastian Egenhofer - Laurenz (Assistant) Professor for Contemporary
Art, University of Basel

Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Senior Research
Fellow, Central St Martins College of Art and Design, University of the
Arts, London; co-editor of Afterall; co-curator, 9 th Istanbul Biennale, 2005

Brian Holmes - writer and art critic (Paris); author of Hieroglyphs of the
Future: Art and Politics in a Networked Era , Zagreb, 2002

Dr Pamela Lee - Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History,
Stanford University; author of Object to be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon
Matta-Clark, MIT Press, 2000 and Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the
1960s, MIT Press, 2004

CRC 626, Free University Berlin
Dr Susanne Leeb - Research Associate Project A7, Sub-project: Cartographic
Models in Contemporary Art

Prof. Christoph Menke - Head of Project C1 / Institute for Philosophy,
University of Potsdam; author of The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic
Negativity in Adorno and Derrida, MIT Press, 1998.

Dr Juliane Rebentisch - Research Associate C1, Sub-project: Democracy and
Theatre / Institute for Philosophy, University of Potsdam; author of
Aesthetik der Installation, Suhrkamp, 2003

Dr Dorothea Von Hantelmann - Research Associate Project A7, Sub-project:
Exemplary Experiences: Relations Between Work and Situation in
Contemporary Art

CRMEP, London
Prof. Eric Alliez -Project: Undoing the Image
Dr Stewart Martin - Project: Absolute art
Prof. Peter Osborne -Director, CRMEP; Project: Art Against Aesthetics

CRMEP/CRC 626 liaison:
Dr Armen Avanessian, Postdoctoral Fellow, CRC 626
Luke Skrebowski, PhD candidate, CRMEP