Sensorium: Philosophy and Aesthetics
Wednesday June 22nd – Friday June 24th, 2005
A conference to be held at the School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia

Confirmed keynote speakers
Conference streams
Registration form
Organisers and contact information

This three-day conference will cover a range of thinkers and issues in contemporary philosophy and aesthetics, with a particular focus on two French philosophers, Jean-François Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze. Offers of papers are invited from researchers in the fields of philosophy, the social sciences, literary and performance studies, the visual arts, architecture, and other creative disciplines interested in the work of Deleuze, Lyotard, or in aesthetics more generally.

Confirmed keynotes and participants include:

John Armstrong
(author The Secret Power of Beauty: Why Happiness is in the Eye of the Beholder and The Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy);

Andrew Benjamin
(editor of Judging Lyotard and The Lyotard Reader and author of Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde);

Barbara Bolt
(author of Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image).

Eugene Holland
(author of Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism and Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis);

Ian James
(author of Pierre Klossowski: the Persistance of a Name);

Arkady Plotnisky
(author of Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology After Bohr and Derrida and the forthcoming Idealism Without Absolutes: Philosophy and Romantic Culture);

Daniel W. Smith
(translator of Gilles Deleuze's The Logic of Sensation and Essays Critical and Clinical (with Michael Greco), and Pierre Klosswski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle).

Stelarc
(Australian-based performance artist whose work investigates human-machine interfaces).

Stream One: Lyotard - Beyond the Postmodern Condition
The reception of the philosophy of Jean-François Lyotard in the English-speaking world has been sporadic and far from comprehensive. Regrettably, his influence has been largely felt through the infamous definition that opens The Postmodern Condition, and to a lesser extent the ironically-flavoured summary found in the 'Reading Dossier' of The Differend. The aim of this symposium is to redress this situation by drawing attention to the large amount of provocative and important work done by Lyotard throughout his career. Particular attention will be given to his early libidinal philosophy, his readings of other philosophers, his aesthetics, and his recent work (from Postmodern Fables onwards). Possible topics for presentations could include: art and aesthetics; Lyotard's readings of Freud, Marx, Kant, Lévinas, Malraux, Augustine, Adorno, or phenomenology; Libidinal Economy; Discours, Figure; paganism; Lyotard's politics and his theorizing of the avant-garde or the postmodern.

Stream Two: Deleuze and Creativity
Gilles Deleuze's work is replete with references to the arts: literature, film music, painting and theatre. Indeed, the aesthetic dimension plays a key role in his account of transcendental empiricism, and of the encounter that provokes thought and novelty. The aim of this symposium is to provide an opportunity for exploring Deleuze's account of creative production in the context of the various arts, and of culture more generally. Possible topics for presentations could include: schizoanalysis; the account of the discordant faculties; Deleuze's semiotics of film or painting; his notion of symptomatology in respect to literary texts; major and minor literature; his theorizing of novelty and difference; and the distinctions drawn in What is Philosophy? between the arts, science and philosophy.

Stream Three: Aesthetics
This part of the conference is open to papers from all disciplines theoretically or practically engaging with issues in aesthetics. Both academics and practicing artists are invited to contribute papers or works of relevance to the conference theme. Possible topics for
presentations could include: postmodern aesthetics; the changing role (and relevance) of art in contemporary culture; emergent art forms; the relation between thought and sensation; the sublime; gender and aesthetics; cross-cultural aesthetics; recent movements within the respective arts; art and politics; the relationship between the marketplace and the reception and consumption of artworks; art and ritual; art and religion; feminism and art; the viability of the avant-garde; Art brut; theorizing sensation, perception and/or representation; art and sub-cultures; cyber-culture; etc.

We welcome papers discussing philosophers, cultural critics, or artists who have written or commented on the philosophy of aesthetics or debates in aesthetics (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Hume, Burke, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Bakhtin, Heidegger, Bataille, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Barthes, Kristeva, Blanchot, Lacan, Derrida, Nancy, Klossowski, Baudrillard, Adorno, Benjamin, Whitehead, Caillois, Genette, Ricoeur, Cixous, Bourdieu, Foucault, Virillio, De Certeau, Badiou, Artaud, Brecht, Cassirer, Arnheim, Marcuse, Debord, Cage, Jameson, McLuhan, Goodman, Eisenstein, Godard, Marker, Augé, Levy, Eagleton, Fish, Baba, Bal, Zizek, etc.)

Registration

Download and print the registration form

Registration rates (in Australian dollars):

Earlybird (by May 3rd):
Waged $180
Unwaged $70

After earlybird deadline:
Waged $220
Unwaged $100

Per day rate:
Waged $100
Unwaged $50

Information on how to register is on the registration form.

Organising Committee (and contact addresses):
Felicity Colman
Graham Jones
Jon Roffe
Ashley Woodward

This conference is organized by the following departments and groups at the University of Melbourne:
The School of Creative Arts;
The Department of Cinema Studies in the School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology;
Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy (in association with the Department of Philosophy).