Contemporary arts and sciences, natural or social, are often said to have sold their soul, at least their modern soul of a self-serving aesthetics and self-confident epistemology, respectively. Ersatz modernism may linger on as a sales argument at best. How to develop one’s taste in this familiar situation? How to find domain-specific meaning, if any? How to become, or remain, an “amateur d’art” and, perhaps, an “amateur de sciences” too (Latour 2006)?
This summer conference brings together a mixed public, including academics, artists and aficionados. In the afternoon, they will discuss a variety of practices of judgment in situ, including those involved in appreciating art, tasting coffee, and collecting music. In the evening, the conversation will be prolonged by addressing the changing circumstances of judgment – epistemic, aesthetic, and economic. Nathalie Heinich (CNRS, Paris) will give a lecture on arts, sciences, and values from a socio-historical perspective. Franz Schultheis (UNISG, St. Gallen) and Stefano Velotti (Sapienza University of Rome) will open the discussion with two critical rejoinders. The title of the summer conference – “Bittersweet” – hints at Paul Klee’s largest canvas Insula dulcamara (1938). In doing so, the conference title asks how to avoid its ironic reproduction, whilst offering the promise of momentary solace in Rome, on the Aventino hill and at the Istituto Svizzero, where the conference will take place.
Studio Roma is the metropolitan ‘artist’s studio’. A place of production, transformation and work to find out the role and potential of art and of different kinds of knowledge.
studioroma.istitutosvizzero.it
PROGRAM
Friday, 24 June 2016
2.30pm Venue: Bar Caffè e Musica, largo Giovanni Chiarini 2
Dopo pranzo: aesthetic judgment, a roundtable discussion
Giolo Fele (University of Trento), Nathalie Heinich (CNRS, Paris),
Stefano Velotti (Sapienza University of Rome) and LP Company (Laurent Schlittler & Patrick Claudet, Lausanne)
6.00pm Venue: Istituto Svizzero di Roma, via Ludovisi 48
Introduction
Michele Luminati (Istituto Svizzero di Roma)
6.30pm Arts, sciences, and values: a socio-historical approach
Nathalie Heinich (CNRS, Paris), followed by two critical rejoinders by
Franz Schultheis (UNISG, St. Gallen) and Stefano Velotti (Sapienza University of Rome)