Objects at Work: How Do Artefacts Work Aesthetically in Everyday Organisational Life? Two Case Studies Dan Eugen Ratiu
This paper aims to open up new analytical perspectives on the uses and roles of artefacts and space design in everyday organisational life, by addressing the aesthetic dimensions of the everyday world of work and drawing attention to the aesthetic agency of artefacts. The first part addresses theoretical–methodological issues to lay bare specific key principles and methods for analysing the aesthetic character of organizational life, space and actions, and answering the question of how do objects work aesthetically to shaping habits, behaviours and lifestyles in organizations. The second part provides an application through two case studies: the new space of co-working Stables (2020) that repurposed recently the former Austro-Hungarian imperial stables in Cluj (Romania), and the new brand buildings of Bosch’s Engineering Centre campus in Cluj (2020) and in Holzkirchen (2022). I argue that these are not mere cases of practices of renovating and repurposing spaces or urban regeneration of former industrial sites. Rather they exemplify blatantly the role that aesthetic elements play in mediating action, control and ...
May 3, 2023. A new issue of the ESA newsletter has just been published. It features information about the upcoming ESA conference in Budapest and a number of invitations to conferences organised by members and friends of the ESA. You may also learn about favorite books of the three keynote speakers at the ESA conference, Veronika Darida, Stacie Friend, and Alva Noë. Please, download the new issue here.
The issue contains an address by the new president of the ESA, Pauline von Bonsdorff, an interview with Alex Fisher, who received Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize in 2022, call for papers and panel proposals to the coming ESA conference in Budapest and various calls, announcements, and invitations by the members of the Society. You can download it here.
The European Society for Aesthetics held its annual conference in 2013 at the Charles University of Prague from the 17th of June (morning) until the 19th of June (evening) 2013.
The conference included more than 60 papers from all traditions and on a variety of systematic and historical topics in philosophical aesthetics. You can see the programme (below) or download the programme here. The ESA also held its general assembly 2013 during the conference.
CONFERENCE VENUE
MONDAY 25th June School of Architecture (Guimarães)
Auditorium A1
Auditorium A2
Auditorium A3
Room 1.58
8-9 am
Registration
9-9.30 am
Opening
9.30-11 am
Plenary Session Krystyna Wilkoszewska (Kraków) Transcultural Studies in Aesthetics: The Ups and Downs
11-11.30 am
Coffee Break
11.30-12.30 pm
Science, Art, Aesthetics Vladimir J. Konečni (San Diego) Empirical Psycho-Aesthetics and Her Sisters: Substantive and Methodological Issues
Phenomenology of Art Nikola Mirkovic (Freiburg) Beyond Aesthetics: Heidegger’s Ontology of Art
Aesthetics of Environment Dan E. Ratiu (Cluj) Remapping the Realm of Aesthetics: Recent Controversies about the Aesthetic and the Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life
Literature, Fiction, Narrative Dina Mendonça (Lisbon) The Experimental Solution for the Paradox of Fiction and the Paradox of Tragedy
12.30-1.30 pm
Science, Art, Aesthetics Vid Simoniti (Oxford) New Directions in Neuroaesthetics and Their Relevance to Philosophy of Art
Phenomenology of Art Cristian Hainic (Cluj) An Investigation into the Heideggerian Roots of the Aesthetics of Everyday Life: A Hermeneutical Approach to Art
Conference Venues: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme – MSH-Alpes (no. 12 on the map): Registration, MSH Conference Theatre, and Coffee Breaks (all on the 1st floor) Bâtiment des Sciences de l’Homme et des Mathématiques – BSHM (no. 14 on the map): BSHM Conference Theatre (on the 1st floor) Restaurant Diderot (yellow no. 1 on the map): Conference Lunches Caffe Forte: Conference Dinner
PROGRAMME
Monday, 18th
MSH Theatre
BSHM Theatre
14:00 – 14:30
Registration
14:30 – 16:00
Welcome Address & Plenary Session Roger Pouivet (Nancy) Modal Aesthetics
16:00 – 17:00
Expression Krzysztof Guczalski (Krakow) Expressiveness as a Quality and as the Expression of a Fictive Subject
Images Ken Wilder (London) Michael Fried and Beholding Video Art
17:00 – 17:30
Coffee Break
18:30 – 19:30
Themes from Eliasson Ronald Shusterman (Montpellier) Aesthetic Effects and Determinism
Images Zsolt Batori (Budapest) Image and Imagination
20.30
Conference Dinner
Tuesday, 19th
MSH Theatre
BSHM Theatre
9:30 – 11:00
Plenary Session Josef Füchtl (Amsterdam) Produced and Nevertheless ...
The ESA Conference 2022 was co-organised by the ESA and the Estonian Academy of Arts and took place on 28–30 June 2022 at the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja puiestee 7) in Tallinn.
UPDATE (as of July 8, 2022) Pauline von Bonsdorff is a new President of the European Society of Aesthetics, elected at the General Assembly of the European Society of Aesthetics during the conference in Tallinn on June 28, 2022. She is succeeding Francisca Pérez Carreño. Furthermore, Claire Anscomb, María José Alcaraz León, and Jochen Schuff were elected as new members of the executive committee.
UPDATE (as of June 24, 2022). Those ESA members who do not go to Tallinn in person may join the general assembly, taking place on Tuesday, June 28, 18:30 EEST, online. For a zoom link, please write to Iris Vidmar Jovanović (ividmar (at) ffri.uniri.hr). The request should include your name, affiliation, and information about the ESA conference you attended in the past (if any) and should be sent three hours before the meeting starts the latest.
UPDATE (as of June 21, 2022). The ESA executive committee has nominated two candidates for executive committee, Claire Anscomb and Jochen Schuff, and a candidate for presidency, Pauline von Bonsdorff. We are also exploring the possibility of running the general assembly as ...
The Sublime Redivivus. Kant’s Legacy for Contemporary Art Adrián Kvokačka
I address the relationship between Lyotard’s account of the sublime in art (Lyotard 1988; 1991) and Kant’s original account of the notion. As is renown, according to Lyotard, the aesthetics of modern art corresponds in itself to an aesthetics of the sublime. Nevertheless, Lyotard affirms that the sublime we find in art is “still the sublime in the sense that Burke and Kant described and yet it isn’t their sublime anymore.” (Lyotard 1991, p. 93)
How should we make sense of this claim? And, more generally, how are we understand Kant’s legacy in Lyotard’s conception of the sublime? To attempt to answer these questions, my strategy is twofold. On the one hand, I show how indebted Lyotard’s conception of the sublime is to Kant’s treatment of the notion in the Third Critique. On the other hand, I discuss the amendments that the French philosopher proposes in order to make Kant’s analysis compatible with twentieth-century art. I begin in section one by focusing on some passages in ...
A new issue of the ESA Newsletter was published on May 5, 2022. It features an interview with Francisca Pérez-Carreño, whose term as the ESA president is approaching its final days, as well as the information on the new elections and conference in Tallinn. It also includes invitations to conferences, book announcements, and calls for papers. You can download it here.
The European Society for Aesthetics is born out of the idea to give voice to the unified and diverse voices of European debates in the field of philosophical aesthetics. The ongoing invasion of Ukraine by troops of the Russian Federation has shocked us all. It is a violation of international law and the sovereignty of Ukraine. Our solidarity is with the Ukrainian people as a whole and in particular our colleagues, friends, and students from Ukraine, to whom we are connected through a variety of co-operations. (Released on March 2, 2022.)
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Advanced rules
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Other considerations
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Põhja pst 7, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia. See the MAP
The conference takes place at the main building of the Estonian Academy of Arts, in the atmospheric Kalamaja district. Tallinn has one airport which has direct connections to 40 international (mostly European) destinations. The airport is located inside the city, only half an hour away from the conference venue (on public transport). See the map of the airport.
Visitors from Finland or Sweden could also opt for the ferry: a trip from Helsinki to Tallinn lasts a little over 2 hours, the trip from Stockholm to Tallinn around 17 hours.
Riga and St. Petersburg are accessible by bus as well. A bus ride from Riga takes approximately 4,5 hours, from St. Petersburg about 8 hours.
How to get to the conference venue from Tallinn Airport:
Take bus number 2 from “Lennujaam” (Airport) stop that is located on the city side of the passenger terminal of the airport (and a bit to ...
The European Society for Aesthetics is run by a eleven-person strong executive committee which includes the president, the secretary and the treasurer of the ESA, as well as the organiser of the annual conferences, the programme chair of those meetings and the editors of the ESA proceedings. The offices of the ESA include also a webmaster, who however need not be a member of the committee.
For any inquiries, please contact the holder of the office pertaining closest to your question(s) or comment(s). If unsure, please contact the secretary of the ESA.
The European Society for Aesthetics was founded in 2008 at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), where it has been based ever since.
The ESA executive committee has been elected five times by the members of the ESA during the ESA Assembly meetings: in 2009 in Fribourg (Presidency and Committee), in 2012 in Guimarães/Braga (Committee), in 2015 in Dublin (Presidency and Committee), in 2018 in Maribor (Committee), in 2022 in Tallinn (Presidency and Committee).
Name
Affiliation
ESA committee member
Offices
Claire Anscomb
Liverpool, UK
2022-
María José Alcaraz León
Murcia, Spain
2022-
Jochen Schuff
Berlin, Germany
2022-
Programme chair (2022 – )
Pauline von Bonsdorff
Jyväskylä, Finland
2018-
President, (2022 – )
Iris Vidmar
Rijeka, Croatia
2018-
Editor of the Proceedings (2018 – 2019), Secretary (2020 – )
The goal has been to establish the ESA as one of the main research and communication platforms for people interested in aesthetics, with a special focus on aesthetics in Europe.
More specifically, the aim is to promote philosophical and other academic research and teaching in aesthetics and the theory of art, and in particular to encourage exchange between those pursuing these activities in different parts of Europe, and in the diverse traditions that European aesthetics involves.
In particular, the ESA aims:
To distribute information about the activities of national and regional societies for aesthetics in Europe;
To organise regular international conferences and meetings for the discussion of topics in aesthetics;
To publish, or help with the publication of, high quality research in aesthetics done by European researchers.
The ESA Essay Prize for PhD students and early career researchers was launched in 2017 in memory Fabian Dorsch, a co-founder and a first secretary of the European Society for Aesthetics. Its former winners include Irene Martínez Marín (2019), Mark Windsor (2018), and Servaas van der Berg (2017).
Membership of the ESA is free and open to everyone. Among the benefits are regular updates on the ESA conferences, as well as on other aesthetics-related news.
If you would like to become a member, please register with your email address. If you have lost your password, you may reset it.
Among the benefits of becoming a member of the ESA is that you may receive the ESA newsletter and submit events to our publicly accessible events listing.
Please add only events (conferences, workshops, talks, calls for papers, etc.) that are closely related to philosophical aesthetics. Your submission will be published after it has have been reviewed by us.
If your event involves a call for papers, please add two events: one for the deadline of paper submission, and one for the dates of the event proper.
Please fill in the following form below or send an email directly to events(a)eurosa.org.
The aim of the Newsletter is to inform the ESA community about the members’ research activities, newly published papers and books as well as online aesthetic events.
We are interested in: upcoming conferences, online events, recently published books and journals (or the forthcoming ones), joint project invitations, and any important news related to the field of aesthetics.
The expected publication of the newsletter is on May/June and November/December.
Deadline for submissions: April 1st and September 1st.
If you want ESA Newsletter to publish any news related to Aesthetics, submit the information through this form (up to 150 words):
The executive committee of the European Society for Aesthetics is happy to announce that the winning essay of the 2022 Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize is “In Defence of Fictional Examples” by Alex Fisher (University of Cambridge). The committee appreciated that the essay provides a new take on a longstanding discussion about the cognitive value of literary fiction whilst also giving many insights regarding the nature of thought experiments and their role in philosophical inquiry. Alex will present the paper on Thursday, June 30th, 2022 at 3 pm (EEST). A longer version of the winning essay will be published in Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics.
The ESA Essay Prize for PhD students and early career researchers was launched in 2017 in memory Fabian Dorsch, a co-founder and the first secretary of the European Society for Aesthetics. Its former winners include Nemesio García-Carril Puy (2021), Jeremy Page (2020), Irene Martínez Marín (2019), Mark Windsor (2018), and Servaas van der Berg (2017).
The European Society for Aesthetics awards an essay prize for PhD students and early career scholars (max. three years from the doctorate) in connection with its yearly conference. Former winners of the prize are not eligible to participate.
The prize consists of stipend of 500 €. The winning essay will be considered for publication in the journal Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics. For more information on the journal please visit https://estetikajournal.org/
All submissions to the prize must be in English. The selection of the prize winner will be broken down into two stages. First submissions should be made by following the general call of the ESA conference and all submissions will be considered for presentation at the conference. Please place “(Essay Prize)” after the title of your submission in EasyChair to indicate that you want your submission to be considered for the prize. After the first round of reviews, selected authors will be asked to submit a full conference paper (max. 5,000 words, including bibliographies and footnotes) by April 15th, 2022. The recipient of the prize will be selected from this group. We aim to announce the ...
Please note that we do not publish a normal journal, but conference proceedings. This means that we do not welcome any submissions of papers that were not presented at one of our conferences.
If you are eligible to submit a paper (i.e. you presented it at the last ESA conference), please send an electronic file by email to the editors of the proceedings.
Apart from changes to the layout, the paper will be published in the state in which you send it to us. So please make sure that you send us the final version of your paper. Due to our limited resources, you will not be able to implement changes to the content – including linguistic corrections – after the deadline, unless you do it yourself.
Also, in order to ensure a uniform layout for all papers, please make sure that your paper conforms to all the style requirements outlined below. Papers who do not satisfy this criterion will be returned to their authors for ...
All papers presented at one of the ESA conferences are eligible for inclusion in the proceedings of the respective year. The papers for the conferences are reviewed, selected and edited by the members of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Aesthetics.
The selection for the conference happens through standard blind review (though without the provision of editorial comments). The acceptance rate is about 30 – 50 %.
Despite the 2020 conference cancellation, we hope you would consider contributing your full paper to this year’s proceedings. Please note that this does not prevent you from publishing your paper elsewhere, and that you will retain all rights to your paper. It does however make the paper ineligible for submission to the conference planned for Tallinn in June 2021. There will be a new call for abstracts in the autumn. The deadline of submission to the proceedings is the 1st November 2020. We aim to publish in January 2021. Papers will ...
Keynote speakers Emmanuel Alloa: Sharing Perspectives. Points of View in Art and Philosophy Pauline von Bonsdorff: Aesthetics, Culture and Nature Virve Sarapik: Aesthetics and Semiotics. Partly Site-specific
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Keynote speakers Bence Nanay: Aesthetic Experience as Achievement David Davies: Explananda for an Ontology of Multiple Artworks Erika Fischer-Lichte: Transformative Aesthetics
Keynote speakers Hanne Appelqvist: What Can Mere Musical Form Show Us about Reality? Ruth Sonderegger: Emancipation, normalization, or coercion? Aesthetic education from Kant to Spivak Lydia Goehr: Painting in Waiting: Prelude to a Critical Philosophy of History and Art
Keynote speakers Giovanni Matteucci: The (Aesthetic) Extended Mind: From Experience-of to Experience-with Robert Hopkins: The Sculpted Image Catrin Misselhorn: Conceptual Knowledge in Literature
Keynote speakers Hagi Kenaan: Photography: The Visual as an Existential Dominique Chateau: Art, otherwise than art Eileen John: Artistic Differences: Disliking and Disagreeing about Art
The conference will take place at the House of Music Hungary The area itself (with 3 museums nearby and the park) is a popular location for people visiting the city.
A new issue of the ESA Newsletter was published on November 21, 2021. It features an interview with the 2021 winner of Fabian Dorsch ESA essay prize Nemesio García-Carril Puy and much more. It also includes invitations to conferences, journals’ and books’ announcements, and calls for papers. You can download it here.
The European Society for Aesthetics Newsletter (Issue 1, Vol. 2, June 2021) was published on June 8th 2021. It features the address by the ESA President Paca Pérez-Carreño as well as an interview with the winner of Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize in 2020, Jeremy Page. It also includes invitations to online events, journal announcements, and calls for papers. You can download a second issue of the newsletter here.
The executive committee of the European Society for Aesthetics is happy to announce that the winning essay of the 2021 Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize is “Interpretive Authenticity: Performances, Versions and Ontology” by Nemesio García-Carril Puy (University of Murcia). The committee appreciated careful, well-informed, and convincing argumentation backed up by a great choice of examples. Nemesio will present the paper on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021 at the ESA conference. A longer version of the winning essay will be published in Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics.
The ESA Essay Prize for PhD students and early career researchers was launched in 2017 in memory Fabian Dorsch, a co-founder and the first secretary of the European Society for Aesthetics. Its former winners include Jeremy Page (2020), Irene Martínez Marín (2019), Mark Windsor (2018), and Servaas van der Berg (2017).
The conference of the European Society of Aesthetics is taking place online on June 21 – 23, its structure, however, closely follows the format of a real event. For a full programme, please go here. To attend the conference, please register by June 17.
The European Society for Aesthetics Newsletter (Issue 1, Vol. 2, June 2021) was published on June 8th 2021. It features the address by the ESA President Paca Pérez-Carreño as well as an interview with the winner of Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize in 2019, Irene Martínez Marín. It also includes invitations to online events, journal announcements, and calls for papers. You can download it here.
The European Society for Aesthetics Newsletter (Issue 2, Vol. 2 December 2020) was published on December 8th 2020. It features the address by the ESA President Paca Pérez-Carreño as well as an interview with the creator of the new logo of the European Society for Aesthetics, Fernando Infante del Rosal. It also includes invitations to online events, journal announcements, and calls for papers. You can download a second issue of the newsletter here.
Dear members of the European Society for Aesthetics, please do submit your short (up to 150 words) contributions to a 2nd issue of the ESA newsletter. We are interested in: upcoming conferences, online events, recently published books and journals (or the forthcoming ones), joint project invitations, and any important news related to the field of aesthetics. The deadline for submissions has been extended to September 21st. Please, send your submissions (or any questions regarding the contents) to tereza.hadravova@ff.cuni.cz.
Expected publication of the newsletter is in October 2020.
The first issue of the newsletter, published in May 2020, can be downloaded here.
The European Society for Aesthetics Newsletter (Issue 1, Vol. 1 May 2020) was published on May 11th 2020. It features the address by the ESA President Paca Pérez-Carreño as well as an interview with the winner of Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize in 2019, Irene Martínez Marín. It also includes invitations to online events, journal announcements, and calls for papers. You can download a second issue of the newsletter here.
Since no winner was selected, the executive committee have decided to open the call for the ESA logo, originally closed in March 2020, to new entries. A call for the ESA logo design is to be found here.
Deadline: August 31st 2020. Submissions to be emailed to secretary@eurosa.org.
The selected logo will be awarded a one off payment of €500.
The eleventh volume of the ESA Proceedings has just been published. It has been edited by Connell Vaughan and Iris Vidmar Jovanović and contains papers presented at the ESA Conference 2019 held in Warsaw.
The twelfth ESA conference takes place on June 21 – 23, 2021 online and it closely follows the format of a real event. Please, download the full programme (pdf) and the book of abstracts (docx and pdf).
Keynote Speakers:
Professor David Davies (McGill)
Professor Bence Nanay (Antwerp)
Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte (Freie Universität Berlin)
REGISTRATION (for those who do not present their papers at the conference)
To attend the conference, one needs to send an e-mail to the ESA Treasurer Adam Andrzejewski (a.andrzejewski@uw.edu.pl) expressing his/her interest in participating in the event and (preferably) including a receipt certifying paying the conference fee. The conference fee is 10 euro and the deadline for registration is June 17.
The fee has to be paid to the ESA bank account:
Account number: 91-281330-5
IBAN: CH6509000000912813305
SWIFT/BIC: POFICHBEXXX The Society’s address is: European Society for Aesthetics, c/o University of Fribourg, Department of Philosophy, Avenue de l’Europe 20, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
All papers presented at the conference are eligible for publication in the Proceedings of the ESA (details available ...
