English Version:

Platform #1 of the German Society for Aesthetics

Institute for Science and Art (iwk) Vienna, Fri., 21.11. and Sat., 22.11.2025

www.dgae.de | www.iwk.ac.at

Organized by:

Aloisia Moser (Vienna), Judith-Frederike Popp (Vienna), Jörg Sternagel (Passau)

The acute crises of planetary life do not only manifest themselves in life-threatening effects on physical integrity. They change the way we experience our environment, how we construct our interactions with it from perceptions, sensations, desires, and words.

While the physical effects are already difficult to grasp in their scope, the transformations in the ways of interacting with the world from our entanglement in it quickly elude any ordering grasp, which is often based on a human self-image as a controlling power.

Things look somewhat different when we look at the arts: Here we find seismographic capacities that register and make accessible even seemingly insignificant changes and their effects.

The planned platform addresses the challenge of providing a broad insight into current realizations of these capacities. Three nodes serve as a guide for this insight, which aims to place less emphasis on controlling order and more on the richest possible picture of the intricate web of experience:

(1) The evidently undeniable nature of climate change brings to light global interdependencies that are a matter of life and death. This creates an obligation to recognize how interconnected we are and how we are called upon to reorganize the world we live in, precisely because it is becoming increasingly incomprehensible and inaccessible without its ongoing destruction.

(2) The inevitable return of suppressed nature takes forms that manifest themselves in a complex interplay between external circumstances and inner fantasies, dreams and desires, which stubbornly resists controlling access, but at the same time finds expression, for example, in cultural products.

(3) In contemporary literature, we observe a shift toward aesthetic descriptions of extreme climatic conditions that shape narratives in new ways. Instead of traditional narratives driven by subjects, we are witnessing a literature that foregrounds sensuality. This openness to sensory perceptions could be the key to challenging dominant narratives and fostering an interrelational understanding of our experiences.

(Post-)doctoral researchers who submit proposals of up to 500 words and a short bio of up to 200 words in a single PDF by May 15, 2025, will have the opportunity to present their projects for discussion in half-hour presentations. Please send submissions by email to all three organizers:

aloisiamoser@gmail.com, j.popp@akbild.ac.at, joerg.sternagel@uni-passau.de

Feedback and publication of the program will take place by June 1, 2025 .