Join us in celebrating the publication of Realism Materialism Art, an anthology of essays and artist projects published by the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in conjunction with Sternberg Press and designed by Zak Group. Combining theoretical presentations with artistic interventions, the event will feature artists Diann Bauer and R. Lyon with curators Mohammad Salemy and Natalia Zuluaga alongside the book’s editors, Christoph Cox, Jenny Jaskey, and Suhail Malik.
The event will be followed by a reception at the Artist’s Institute, 163 Eldridge Street, New York.
Realism Materialism Art (RMA) introduces a diverse selection of new realist and materialist philosophies and examines their ramifications in the arts. Encompassing neo-materialist theories, object-oriented ontologies, and neo-rationalist philosophies, RMA serves as a primer on “speculative realism,” considering its conceptual innovations as spurs to artistic thinking and practice and beyond. Despite their differences, these philosophical positions propose that thought can and does think outside itself, and that reality can be known without its being shaped by and for human comprehension. Today’s realisms and materialisms explicitly challenge many of the dominant assumptions of cultural practice and theoretical inquiry, opening up new domains of research and artistic inquiry.
Cutting across diverse thematic interests and modes of investigation, the 35 essays in RMA offer a snapshot of the emerging and rapidly changing set of ideas and practices proposed by contemporary realisms and materialisms. The book demonstrates the broad challenge of realist and materialist approaches to received disciplinary categories and forms of practice, capturing their nascent reworking of art, philosophy, culture, theory, and science, among other fields. As such, RMA expands beyond the primarily philosophical context in which realism and materialism have developed.
Contributors: Armen Avanessian, Elie Ayache, Amanda Beech, Ray Brassier, Mikko Canini, Diana Coole, Christoph Cox, Manuel DeLanda, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tristan Garcia, Iain Hamilton Grant, Elizabeth Grosz, Boris Groys, Graham Harman, Terry Horgan, Jenny Jaskey, Katerina Kolozova, James Ladyman, François Laruelle, Nathan Lee, Suhail Malik, Quentin Meillassoux, Reza Negarestani, John Ó Maoilearca, Trevor Paglen, Luciana Parisi, Matthew Poole, Matjaž Potrč, João Ribas, Matthew Ritchie, Alicia Ritson, Susan Schuppli, Steven Shaviro, Nick Srnicek, Achim Szepanski, Eugene Thacker, McKenzie Wark, and Andy Weir.
For more information about Realism Materialism Art, including excerpts from the book, click here.
About the Center for Curatorial Studies
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late 20th-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation and its social significance. CCS Bard cultivates innovative thinking, radical research and new ways to challenge our understanding of the social and civic values of the visual arts. CCS Bard provides an intensive educational program alongside its public events, exhibitions, and publications, which collectively explore the critical potential of the institutions and practices of exhibition-making. It is uniquely positioned within the larger Center’s tripartite resources, which include the internationally renowned CCS Bard Library and Archives and the Hessel Museum of Art, with its rich permanent collection.
Center for Curatorial Studies and
Hessel Museum of Art
Bard College, PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
T +1 845 758 7598 / ccs@bard.edu
www.bard.edu/ccs
Eric Pommier (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile),author of Ontologie de la vie et éthique de la responsabilité selon Hans Jonas, Vrin, Paris 2013, will give a talk entitled: “Life and Anthropology: A Discussion between Kantian Criticism and Jonasian Ontology”
Abstract:
Critical anthropology can be seen as the common ground of investigation of Kant and Jonas. However I would like to show that it is because Kant does not see the true root of our finitude that Jonas criticizes him. As human finitude is due to the finitude of life, morals and epistemology have to be founded in an ontology of life that reveals its true mode of being. Jonas’s critique of Kant does not mean however that we have to forget the theoretical and practical lessons of criticism. On the contrary, it deals with the necessity to justify in a radical way our limitations thanks to an ontological thought, which does not fall into dogmatism. Then Jonas’s philosophy would be an attempt to found Kantian criticism on a bio-ontological basis.
This event is sponsored by The New School for Social Research.
Monism Conference
Organized by Jonathan Schaffer
for November 11-12, 2016
at Rutgers University
Friday November 11th
9:30 – 10:00 Breakfast
10:00 – 11:15 Terry Horgan, “The One is Real but the Many are Transcendentally Ideal”
11:30 – 12:45 Dean Zimmerman, “Arguments for Monism from Internal Relations”
12:45 – 3:00 Lunch
3:00 – 4:15 Ricki Bliss, “Monisms East and West”
4:30 – 5:45 Mark Johnston, “How the One Contingently Gave Rise to the Many”
Saturday November 12th
9:30 – 10:00 Breakfast
10:00 – 11:15 Kelly Trogdon, “Sparse Ontology beyond the Concrete”
11:30 – 12:45 Elizabeth Miller, “Collectivism”
12:45 – 3:00 Lunch
3:00 – 4:15 Ted Sider, “Monism, Ground, and Structuralism”
4:30 – 5:45 Michael Della Rocca, “Monism of Knowledge”
This conference is free and open. No advanced registration or anything else is needed to attend.
We are grateful to the Marc Sanders Foundation for their generous support.
Presented by SWIP-Analytic
Scholars working under the broad umbrella of New Materialism have offered compelling reappraisals of the ways in which we know, interact with, and exist in the world. This scholarship also intersects with recent work on music and sound, which raises rich sets of questions regarding human agency, material, ethics, aesthetics, embodiment, and the subject/object dichotomy, among other issues.
We invite scholars working in the humanities, arts and sciences to submit proposals for papers and performances that engage with the themes of sound and new materialism, broadly construed. We welcome work that adopts historical, technological, analytical, philosophical, materialist, and creative vantage points, among others. Overall, this conference will direct these diverse disciplinary and methodological perspectives towards convergent and critical issues, creating new, interdisciplinary lines of enquiry and generating original research.
The one-day conference will consist of panels that comprise of papers with short reflections by a moderator, as well as an evening concert that includes opportunities for discussion. The concluding concert of work that engages with these themes from creative perspectives will afford attendees with an opportunity to consider and discuss issues concerning sound, material, and agency in a forum that contrasts with, but also complements, our events during the day. Conference participants are strongly encouraged to attend both the daytime and evening portions of the conference.
Proposals are called for:
Paper presentations of 20 minutes with 10 minutes of Q&A.
Artistic presentation of 20 minutes with 10 minutes of discussion
Submission: Proposals of no more than 500 words (300 words for artistic presentation) should be submitted as a PDF by August 14th 2019 to jc5036@columbia.edu
and include “NMAS Submission” in the subject line. If you’re applying for an artistic presentation please include three representative 2 minute audio/video examples. Please also include the title of your proposed paper and anonymize your submission. Include your name, affiliation, and contact information in the body of the email, and also nominate any audio/visual requirements for your paper or performance.
There is a broad consensus that Aristotle introduced the concept of matter in order to develop a consistent account of substantial change. However, it is disputed which role matter fulfills in substantial change. According to the traditional interpretation, matter persists while taking on or losing a substantial form. According to a rival interpretation, matter does not persist in substantial change; instead, it is an entity from which a new substance can emerge and which ceases to exist in this process. In my view, both interpretations are problematic in the light of Aristotle’s broader ontological project and are at odds with the way Aristotle describes the substantial generation of living beings. On the basis of Aristotle’s biological theory, I will suggest that Aristotelian matter is a continuant in substantial generation, but does not satisfy the common criteria for persistence that apply to individual substances.
Anna Schriefl
Anna Schriefl is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (assistant professor) at the University of Bonn, and currently a visiting scholar at the New School. She has published a book about Plato’s criticism of money and wealth, and most recently an introduction into Stoicism (both in German).