Lecture by Valery Vino: Fentanyl. Social Somanaesthetic
Lecture and discussion organized by the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies.
As the fentanyl epidemic ravages North America, we must consider its bearing on social aesthetics. To this end, our talk acknowledges atomic, vernacular, medical, statistical, and futuristic angles. We would also like to call the audience’s attention to a void in the celebrated texts, such as Shusterman’s Somaesthetics of City Life, that turn a blind eye to the acute social ills, including our topic and dire poverty, troubling our communities today.
The lecture is followed by a discussion with Madalina Diaconu and Judith-Frederike Popp.
Dr. Valery Vino (he) is a philosopher and part of mongrel matter, based in Australia; please see our open aesthetic literacy in three volumes (2023) and philosophy of final words (forthcoming): mongrelmatter.com
Madalina Diaconu is Associate Professor at the University of Vienna, Austria. She is also a member of the editorial boards of Contemporary Aesthetics, Studia Phaenomenologica and polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren (former editor in chief). She has authored ten books and co-edited twelve collective volumes on aesthetics, environmental ethics, the phenomenology of touch, smell and taste, and urban sensescapes.
Judith Frederike Popp is a philosopher and currently a FWF senior postdoc at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria. Here, she leads the research project “Mediated Autonomy: Ideal and Reality of Aesthetic Practice” and is working on her second monograph with the working title “Gestaltete Verhältnisse: Eine Produktionsästhetik des Subjekts” (“Crafted Relations. Production aesthetics of being a subject”). Recent publications include: Adorno und die Medien. Kritik, Relevanz, Ästhetik, Berlin: Kadmos 2023 (with L. Voropai); “Nah und fern zugleich. Ästhetisch-ethische Überlegungen zur Architektur”, in: S. Meireis/D.M. Feige (Hrsg.): Ästhetik und Architektur, Bielefeld: transcript 2024, 87-110.