Annual Conferences

Annual Conference 2024

Canonization and Revision: Historical Processes of Establishing Aesthetic Authority

Notions of what is canonical have frequently been established and maintained by historical, subject-specific as well as social contexts and have thus influenced aesthetic authority and evaluation, in some cases to the present day. The first annual conference of the second funding phase of the CRC Different Aesthetics aims at a timely reappraisal of research on these processes and traditions. Its focus on “Canonization and Revision” signals that it is taking place in the midst of current controversies on various established canons. These discussions are marked by a feeling of unease concerning canons frequently going as far back as the 19^th century and beyond, which are predicated on notions of aesthetic autonomy and have been subjected, for example, to a postcolonial critique of mechanisms of exclusion. The conference will work out in detail that subject-specific procedures of establishing norms and canons are characterised by potentially displacing alternative ascriptions of authority and appreciation, a fact that results from diverging interests and contributes to separating theory from practice.
In order to map out these complex and dynamic contexts, the interdisciplinary conference will compare different kinds of pre-modern processes of canonization, as well as focus on subject-specific canon formations of the 18^th and 19^th centuries and on contemporary debates. In a diachronic perspective, we thus aim to make visible the historical implications of normative procedures, their basic structures and methods, which serve to establish and deconstruct canons, as well as the exclusions and marginalizations going along with them.

Downloads: Conference programme, Poster

The topic of this conference is the semantic polyvalence of ‘Schein’ (‘appearance’) in premodern cultures. ‘Schein’ (‘appearance’) can refer to phenomena of luminousness, of becoming visible, but also of deception. Our main interests are the medial forms, their cultural-historical preconditions as well as the aims of aesthetic manifestations of ‘Schein’ (‘appearance’). In which concrete forms and with which consequences are aesthetic configurations perceived and evaluated as enlightening and ‘illuminating’ appearances, and when as dissimulating, even deceptive semblances? The interdisciplinary conference shall take into account the forms of ‘Schein’ (‘appearance’) between antiquity and the early modern period. This shall be taken as a starting point for tracing the particular dynamics which often characterize premodern aesthetics.

Downloads: Conference programme, Poster, Call for Papers

Materiality and mediality are central coordinates of a ‘different’ aesthetics which can be used to analyse both the social and compositional premises of premodern acts and artefacts. When investigating aesthetic acts and artefacts, materiality and mediality may therefore contribute to overcoming traditional hierarchies and dichotomies of the history of aesthetics (and the research thereof), e.g., subordinating the material aspect of acts and artefacts under ‘cognitive’ paradigms like form, or playing off the artistic composition against medial functions. In this sense, materiality and mediality refer to specific ways of regarding acts and artefacts, focussing on the material on the one hand, the medial on the other hand as aspects of a different aesthetics.

Downloads: Conference programme, Call for Papers

The cross-sectional topic “Norm and Diversity" within the CRC 1391 Different Aesthetics aims to shed light on the dynamic situation of aesthetic negotiations and negotiations on the aesthetic taking place at the same time. Although formulations of norms aim at universal applicability, firstly there is a plurality of norms which confront each other, and secondly, the norms’ claim to validity is reflected upon by a manifold practice and is thus repeatedly put up for discussion. The conference would like to answer to the narrative that pre-modern artefacts are grounded in normative conceptions, which is still highly influential in research but does not take sufficient notice of the counterpart of diversity.

Downloads: Conference programme, Call for Papers, Call for Papers (Short version)

The cross-sectional area on “Individual and Collective” brings together perspectives on the production and perception of aesthetic acts and artefacts and addresses the tension between single agents and groups. The interaction of “Individual and Collective” is pivotal to a different aesthetics as it questions concepts that are central to an autonomous aesthetics, e.g. the artist as creative individual and genius and the disparagement of collaborative production as aesthetically inferior.

The first conference in this area will focus on “(The) Aesthetics of Collaborative Authorship” from the disciplinary and interdisciplinary angle(s) of literary studies, musicology and art history. It aims at establishing coordinates of a different aesthetics in an interdisciplinary and international framework.

Downloads: Conference programme, Poster