Expanded Description and Mission Statement
This research unit investigates current theoretical, practical and conceptual intersections and formations taking place between politics and aesthetics framed within a global context. The group asserts that the relationship between aesthetics and politics needs to be understood not as two separate spheres but rather as a mutually interdependent relationship generating a transformative potential.
Therefore, it is our aim to investigate the relationship between politics and aesthetics through the lens of social transformation. Social transformation is here understood as not only a singular, ‘revolutionary event’ but as a spatio-temporal process in which specific artistic expressions and political utterances engage with each other. We aim to stay attuned to how locally situated practices of politics and aesthetics are formulated and contested within, against, and together with urgent, global questions of social transformation.
The organizers of the unit invite researchers on all levels and from all faculties with an interest in the field of aesthetics and politics. Besides the scholarly community of interests, the group seeks to explore inspiring ways of understanding not only our own research projects but the general practice of research within the field of aesthetics and politics on a global scale. We want to create an open space informed by enthusiasm for and the joy of discussion, the exchange of ideas, reading and analysing artworks. The group seeks to explore communal research practices and deliberately ensure diversity when inviting speakers, choosing texts and works of analysis for our sessions.
Areas of interest:
Activities:
The series In Relation to....invites researchers from the unit or working within its field of interest to elaborate on their professional relation to a concept, a theorist, an artwork or a method which have had a profound impact on their own research practice. The talk will take approximately 40 minutes and be followed by 20 minutes of debate. The presenting researcher can ask the participants to read maximum 20 pages in advance.
2021:
The PRAXIS study-group is a monthly forum for discussing, exploring and testing different analytical and practical approaches to cultural objects. Every session will take its starting point in a presentation of 1-2 examples from researchers and their own research practice – e.g. an article, an exhibition concept or a conference paper – where a project-in-the-making is presented and discussed using a specific methodological, theoretical or practical approach. The aim of the study group is to engage in collective knowledge processes where new ideas are cultivated and developed in dialogue with fellow researchers. Every session will take approximately 1,5 hours.
