Il Dipartimento di Filosofia "Piero Martinetti" presenta:

Richard Shusterman (Florida Atlantic University) e Stefano Marino (Università di Bologna)

Aesthetic Experience and the Power of Possession

2 maggio 2023, H 18.00-19.30.

Aula M204, settore didattico di via Santa Sofia, Università degli Studi di Milano.

Abstract:
The first part of the lecture reexamines our oldest philosophical of aesthetic experience: that artistic creation and its appreciative reception involve a form of passionate divine possession. After exploring how this irrational, supernatural notion has been critically countered yet repeatedly recurs in important modern theories of aesthetic experienced proposed by rational thinkers, I will explain how we can give the notion of possession a more naturalistic explanation, and will exemplify this through an analysis of performance art described in The Adventures of the Man in Gold.
The second part of the lecture will confirm the focus on the question of aesthetic experience from a pragmatist/somaesthetic perspective, and also the focus on a broad (rather than narrow, i.e. only limited to the so-called "high fine arts") concept of art and the aesthetic, but at the same time will shift the attention to another form of art in which the dimension of (embodied) performance is particularly relevant, namely music and especially pop-rock music. In fact, Shusterman's pragmatist aesthetics and somaesthetics has offered a valuable contribution to the rediscovery, legitimation and appreciation of popular art, in general, and popular music, in particular, also in the field of philosophical academic discourse, and "the power of the body" in the performances displayed by pop-rock music offers significant examples that, among other things, also testify the ethical-political potential of the aesthetic dimension.

It will be possible to access the meeting until all places are filled.

The meeting will be held in English.

Participation is strongly recommended to students of the Doctoral School in Philosophy and Human Sciences and to students of the Doctoral School “The Human Mind and its Explanations: Language, Brain, and Reasoning”.

Everyone interested is welcome to attend.

Organization: Fabrizia Bandi, PhD (Università degli Studi di Milano), Prof. Andrea Pinotti (Università degli Studi di Milano).

Abstract:

The first part of the lecture reexamines our oldest philosophical of aesthetic experience: that artistic creation and its appreciative reception involve a form of passionate divine possession. After exploring how this irrational, supernatural notion has been critically countered yet repeatedly recurs in important modern theories of aesthetic experienced proposed by rational thinkers, I will explain how we can give the notion of possession a more naturalistic explanation, and will exemplify this through an analysis of performance art described inThe Adventures of the Man in Gold.

The second part of the lecture will confirm the focus on the question of aesthetic experience from a pragmatist/somaesthetic perspective, and also the focus on a broad (rather than narrow, i.e. only limited to the so-called "high fine arts") concept of art and the aesthetic, but at the same time will shift the attention to another form of art in which the dimension of (embodied) performance is particularly relevant, namely music and especially pop-rock music. In fact, Shusterman's pragmatist aesthetics and somaesthetics has offered a valuable contribution to the rediscovery, legitimation and appreciation of popular art, in general, and popular music, in particular, also in the field of philosophical academic discourse, and "the power of the body" in the performances displayed by pop-rock music offers significant examplesthat, among other things,also testify the ethical-political potential of the aesthetic dimension.