Art and “Life”

Seminar of Aesthetics of the Faculty of Arts, MU, and the Society for Aesthetics invite you to a lecture by Dr. Agnieszka Bandura (Aesthetics Department, Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocław; The E. Geppert Academy of Fine Art and Design in Wrocław).

Art and “Life”

I would like to introduce you to the current topic of so-called zoe-aesthetics and present the transformations that the category of “life” (from “bios” to “zoe”/ “dzoon”) has undergone in the history of aesthetics and in contemporary art.
Life (or what is alive/ living, other – than human - forms of life, like plants, animals, fungi and so on) used to be considered traditionally as an imitative and decorative element in visual arts. Nowadays, it is increasingly used directly as a material (body, tissues, cells, plants, animals, fungi, biomass, etc.) of art, and even treated in terms of a co-creator in the process of creating art (in bio art, new media art or transgenic art). Such practices are accompanied by philosophical and aesthetic reflection on non-human life forms, their limitations and possibilities, with which I would like to acquaint you.

This introduction will consist of three parts:

• that which is alive and organic in the field of modern aesthetics (Baumgarten; nature vs. culture and technology in art and aesthetics),
• anthropocene and the end of humankind (criticism of anthropocentrism; possible positions towards anthropocene: Rosi Braidotti, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, Jussi Parikka and Donna Haraway; ecology and eco-art);
• bios (life) vs. dzoon/ zoe (that which is alive in general) in bio art and zoe-aesthetics.