**This event will take place in English**
In person and open ONLY to current NYU community (students, staff, faculty), registration required, ID and daily screener verified
MARCH 29TH REGISTRATION HERE
MARCH 30TH REGISTRATION HERE
La Maison Française is pleased to host an exciting symposium on March 29th and 30th, Arts and Pragmatism: New Issues. Join us for two days of fascinating talks and encounters at the intersection of philosophy and artistic practice under the direction of Sandra Laugier and Yann Toma.
with the support of Panthéon Sorbonne University, Politique scientifique program,
Global Works and Society, Liberal Studies, and La Maison Française at New York University
March 29th
2:00PM Introduction. François Noudelmann, Yann Toma, Sandra Laugier
2:15PM - 4:15PM: Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, and the Ordinary
Brendan Hogan (NYU): Dewey and Wittgenstein
Baptiste Cornardeau (Panthéon-Sorbonne and Chicago): Sharing in Art. On Social Ends and Aesthetic Experience
Sandra Laugier (Panthéon-Sorbonne University): Cavell and Dewey on Popular Culture and Democracy
4:30PM - 6:30PM : Pragmatism, Music, Creativity
Pauline Nadrigny (Panthéon-Sorbonne University): Sources and Fortune of Pragmatism in Music
Michael Leonhart (jazz trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist): Creativity/spontaneity & focus/awareness
Dave Schroeder & Antonio Figura (NYU): Protecting The Sacred Space Within All Artists – World Music Instruments, Antonio Figura, piano.
10:00AM -12:00AM: Pragmatism and Realism
Wilfried Laforge (School of Visual Arts): Pragmatist Applications: Allan Kaprow's Quest for the Real
Yann Toma (Panthéon-Sorbonne University): Energy and pragmatism with Richard Shusterman : the experience of the Man in gold.
Nancy Barton (NYU): The idea of the rural and the urban as related to fantasy, aesthetics, nature and pragmatism
12:00AM-2:00PM : Lunch Break
2:00PM- 4:00PM: Art, life & pragmatism
Tomas Vu (Columbia): The question of movement through time
Kevin McCoy (NYU): THE INSIDE WORLD : Dewey, James and Rorty
Eva Ostrowska (French visual artist): Pragmatism applied to Web 3.0: a case study of Sologamist Marriage in the Metaverse
4:00PM-4:15PM: Break
4:30PM-6:00PM : Arts and Experiences
Raymond J. Dowd (Dunnington, Bartholow, & Miller LLP): Law and art: commoditization of art, artist and art experience
Richard Shusterman (Boca Raton): Soma-aesthetics and pragmatism
Thinking/Creating with Pragmatism: from shared aesthetic experience to political and social transformation
An encounter between the arts and philosophy.
This project aims to deepen the experience as a guiding line of this research and aims to overcome the old dualisms: theory/practice, action/idea, fact/value, body/mind. Following the path of pragmatist philosophers, in particular John Dewey and Richard Shusterman, the aim is to develop a concrete way of considering the relationship between visual arts and philosophy. We will aim at establishing a junction between arts and philosophy, in counterpoint of what Dewey named "the museum conception of art". Instead of being restricted to an elite of initiates, art will become a vector of participation in the world and of being in relation with others. On the question of the perception, we will evoke in particular the soma-aesthetics which, according to Shusterman, concerns the meliorative and critical study of our experience and our use of the living body as a site of sensory-aesthetic appreciation and of creative shaping of oneself.
In the field of visual arts and aesthetics, pragmatist philosophy and in particular Dewey, of whom several specialists are involved in the project, defends the idea that aesthetics should not only be seen as the search for truths about art and its works but also as what concerns the experience of people with a work (a sensitive and active experience). The reception would be thus the dynamic experience of an incarnated observer, acting, feeling in his senses and his affects what is the work.
The political stake in pragmatist aesthetics is to make sure that strong aesthetic experiences remain open and accessible to the widest audience. It is about thinking about shared experience as transmitting values. Thus, this question of pragmatism addresses societal issues that concern all audiences, and not just from the perspective of dissemination. By emphasizing experience and agency, this way of approaching pragmatism involves the audience of culture in a broad way until engaging phenomena such as television and digital cultures.
