Questioning Aesthetics Symposium @ Pratt Institute (photos)

"Questioning Aesthetics": A Symposium, began yesterday at the Pratt Institute, and will conclude today. Convened by Michael Kelly of University of North Carolina and Gregg Horowitz of the Pratt, the first day featured three fascinating panels: first: "Conceptualism, Conceptual Art, & Aesthetics,"; second, "Aesthetic Computing, Digitization, & Data Visualization"; third, "Decolonizing Aesthetics, Migratory Aesthetics, & Diaspora Criticism." Three more panels, on "Participatory Aesthetics, Art, & Social Practice"; "Race, Art, & Aesthetics"; and "Improvisation, Embodiment, & Experimental Art," will feature today.The diversity of themes implied by these panel titles, and the even greater variety of topics featured in the new Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Second Edition) recently, published by Oxford UP, and for which the symposium is convened, is a clear indication that perhaps more than other realms of philosophy, "Aesthetics" is a fugitive idea or concept, at once useful and insufficient for describing and examining an aspect of the still-to-be-fully mapped terrain inhabited by and produced by the human (not simply folks from a particular part of the world) senses. Anyways, here below are photos from the first day:

Gregg Horowitz at the Podium; seated left to right: Edward Dimenberg (UC Irvine), Eve Meltzer (NYU), Jorge Otero-Pailos (Columbia), and Jacob Stewart-Halevy (Yale)

Jacob Stewart-Halevy

Jorge Otero-Pailos with a participant

Second Panel: Michael Kelly, Christiane Paul (Whitney Museum), Amber Frid-Jimenez (Emily Carr Univ.), Boris Groys (NYU), Christopher Sula (Pratt)

Christiane Paul               

Boris Groys

 

Karen Lang (Warwick) and Brent Hayes Edwards (Columbia), were in Panel Three, with Miguel Rojas-Sotero (Duke) and me, chaired by Gregg Horowitz

Michael and Brent 

Miguel with a participant

Miguel Rojas-Sotelo

Karen Lang

Brent Hayes Edwards