Elisa Caldarola (2022), “Katharina Grosse: It Wasn’t Us”, in Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics, edited by Darren Hudson Hick, London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

Katharina Grosse’s It Wasn’t Us was on show at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, between 14 June, 2020 and 10 January 2021. In the main hall of this nineteenth century train station, now a museum, stood massive, abstractly sculpted, kaleidoscopically painted Styrofoam blocks; parts of the main hall floor, of the outdoor space behind the building, and of the façade of the museum’s extension were also painted kaleidoscopically. Here I shall examine three aspects of this work: its relationship with pictorial, sculptural and architectural works; its links with the Hamburger Bahnhof building; and its interactive character.

Katharina Grosse, It Wasn’t Us, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2020-2021)

Monday, 11 March 2019, Eleen Deprez (University of Kent), “What Are Curated Exhibitions? An Ontological Question”

Venue: Sala Stefanini, Piazza Capitaniato, 3 – Padova, 16.30-18.30

Abstract: In this paper I will raise questions about the nature of curated exhibitions. My focus will be on the ontological entity (the identity question) and the identity conditions (the individuation question) of curated exhibitions. I will consider curated exhibitions as a site-responsive (i.e. not site-specific) display of items, that creates an appreciative context and makes an utterance. An exhibition can move location. Exhibitions travel from one museum to another and the display adapts its arrangement each time. Sometimes, a reinstallation will use exactly the same artworks, reuse plinths, reproduce the wall labels, and try – within the scope of the new space – to rehang the works in the same way. More often than not however, a reinstallation looks very different from the original exhibition. We intuit that curated exhibitions can be repeated with significant noticeable differences to their display, but there seem to be some limits. How much can an exhibition change when it is being reinstalled? Are, with respect to the identity of a curated exhibition, some features more significant or consequential than others? I will argue that curated exhibitions are an ontological hybrid: a combined ontological entity. The hybrid theory maintains that a curated exhibition comprises a concrete site-responsive display of works of art and an abstract curatorial utterance made through that display. We shall see that the answer to the individuation question is that two curated exhibitions are identical if their authored-curatorial utterances have the same illocutionary force and if their display supports that utterance through a similar appreciative context.

The Aesthetics Lecture Series is part of the Analytic Philosophy and Philosophy of Art Graduate Seminar organized by Prof. Massimiliano Carrara, Prof. Giuseppe Spolaore, Prof. Gabriele Tomasi, Dr. Elisa Caldarola, and Dr. Vittorio Morato for the academic year 2018-2019 at the FISPPA Department (Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy, and Applied Psychology) of the University of Padova, Italy.

The Aesthetics Lecture Series is funded by the University of Padova through the initiative “Supporting TAlent in ReSearch@University of Padova” – STARS Grants (Starting Grant 2018-2020, APAI – “A Philosophy of Art Installation”, P.I. Dr. Elisa Caldarola).

Monday, 10 December 2018, Enrico Terrone (University of Barcelona),”The Appreciator’s Performance. Virtual Reality and The Ontology of Art”

Venue: Sala Stefanini, Piazza Capitaniato, 3 – Padova, 16.30-18.30

The talk will be live-streamed and will remain available on YouTube. Remote participants can watch the live webcast and ask questions using the YouTube Live chat channel.

Abstract: The talk begins with an investigation on the ontological status of works of virtual reality. I argue that these are types whose instances are appreciators’ experiences. This introduces an ontological discrepancy between works of virtual reality and films, since the latter are usually conceived of as types whose instances are projections, not experiences. Yet, we can eliminate such a discrepancy if we treat a film, with its peculiar impression of movement, as instantiated by coupling of a projection with the human mind. I argue that the paradigm of virtual reality, according to which works are instantiated by appreciators’ experiences, can be applied not only to films but also to works of music or works of literature, which are usually conceived of as types, and even to paintings, which are usually conceived of as particular objects. I conclude that the paradigm of virtual reality can lead us to a monist ontology of art according to which all works are types that are instantiated by appreciators’ experiences. This ontology can effectively address some issues that other type-based monist ontological accounts of art such as Strawson’s and Currie’s find it hard to face.

Enrico Terrone is Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Fellow at the LOGOS Research Group, Universitat de Barcelona. He works on philosophical issues concerning aesthetics, ontology and technology. His main area of research is philosophy of film. He has published papers on international journals such as British Journal of Aesthetics, Erkenntnis, The Monist, Philosophy of the Social Sciences.

Monday, 3 December 2019, Adam Andrzejewski (University of Warsaw), “A Plea for The New Ontology of Landscapes”

The talk will be live-streamed and will remain available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbxI4U1UOqw

Remote participants can watch the live webcast and ask questions using the YouTube Live chat channel.

Abstract

The paper aims at an analysis of the concept of landscape, offering an ontological approach. My claim is that such a perspective is hardly ever assumed in philosophical aesthetics, even if theories of landscape appreciation are in fact based on tacit ontological assumptions. I argue that having an explicit ontology of landscapes is important, for aesthetic theories of their appreciation are often attacked in terms of the problems caused by their tacit ontologies. Therefore, I sketch an “Experience Ontology” that serves as an alternative to the ontologies implied in the two best known aesthetic approaches to landscapes. I contend that a landscape should not be conceived of as an object or view but as a kind of experiencing of one’s surroundings, and I believe that our theory is not only free from the shortcomings of the two dominant theories but that it also corresponds better to everyday intuitions.

The talk is based on research co-authored with Mateusz Salwa (University of Warsaw).

Venue: Sala Stefanini, Piazza Capitaniato, 3 – Padova, 16.30-18.30

Adam Andrzejewski is Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw. His research is focused on everyday aesthetics, popular culture, and the ontology of art. He has authored several articles devoted to analytic aesthetics and the philosophy of art, published or accepted for publication in e.g. Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetic, Rivista di estetica, Brill Research Perspectives on Art and Law, and The Croatian Journal of Philosophy. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Evental Aesthetics as well as the Treasurer of the European Society for Aesthetics.