Department of French
Making Sense: For an Effective Aesthetics
An international, interdisciplinary conference, 25 September 2009
University of Cambridge
This conference will explore what it means to make sense of the world around us through the medium of art, and especially contemporary art: its creation, transmission and reception. In a completely new approach to this question, we propose to bring the artist, philosopher and curator together within the academic community. We thus hope to find new directions for discourses about art. Questioning the barriers that so often exist between these different disciplines, and attaching particular importance to the contributions of graduate students, we will seek a common language as we debate and experiment with the idea of 'making sense'.
From art and the sensations it expresses and provokes, to Jean-Luc Nancy's immensely influential philosophical conception of 'sense', to the fundamental question of how to communicate one's experiences of life and art to other people, 'making sense' evokes a multitude of different issues - all of them equally pressing for those who share a passion for art and its future. We seek to form a dynamic interface between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic scholarship, in order to bring forward innovative yet accessible ways of understanding artistic experience in all its forms.
Such a task requires a conference format that takes into account both the advantages and the limitations of the conventional academic system. We look forward to contributions which engage some of the following questions, from students, writers, thinkers, scholars, and artists:
- What does it mean to 'make sense'? What does a work of art that 'makes sense' look like?
- How can we engage with, analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter, and the act of creating an artwork, without losing the affective power of the initial experience?
- What sort of language can we, or should we, use to talk about art?
- How can we use artistic practices to consider academic idioms and protocols from a different perspective? How can we use them to offer a constructive critique?
- Who, what, where is the 'avant-garde' for the 21st century?
- Making sense of art and making sense through art: how far is it possible to successfully integrate the two?
Lorna Collins
Cécilia Falgas-Ravry
Elizabeth Rush
Emma Wilson
Contact details
makingsensecolloquium@googlemail.com
