Search results for "aesthetic"
showing 10 items of 856 documents
Croce e il ruskinismo italiano: i rapporti con Conti e "Il Marzocco"
2006
Il saggio riguarda il confronto e le divergenze tra l'estetica di Croce e l'estetismo di matrice ruskiniana. The essay deals with the confrontation and the conclicts between Croce’s aesthetics and the aestheticism of Ruskin and his followers
Sublime and grotesque:exploring the liminal positioning of clowns between oppositional aesthetic categories
2019
The horror clown is a potential rooted in the liminalities that are an integral part of the clown figure per se. Drawing on anthropological work and the study of popular culture, this paper argues that clowns can be placed between different dualistic frames such as the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the grotesque, and fear and disgust. This positioning and the ways in which clowns operate between these categories are transmitted aesthetically. In this paper the dualistic aesthetics and violent potential of clowns is examined through three different clown examples: the ritual clown, the circus clown and the horror clown. Field observations made by Keisalo of the Chapayeka rituals cl…
The Moral Calculus of Vocational Passion in Digital Gaming
2019
The desire to “do what you love” energizes employment and engagement in creative industries such as digital gaming yet drains hobbyists and aspirants by normalizing expectations to sacrifice job security for passionate work. This article investigates how individuals regulate their aspirations through taken-for-granted trade-offs between vocational compromise and compensation. Multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with players at fan conventions and recruitment events in North America suggests a moral calculus of corruption and sublimation between passion and profit, which can be traced back to industrialization’s cleavage of labor from recreation and its institution of hobbies as productive le…
Animated Corpses: Communicating with Post Mortals in an Anatomical Exhibition
2006
‘Plastinates’ (i.e. corpses conserved through plastics) are lab created artifacts which since the nineties have been the subject of a cultural field experiment via an anatomical exhibition. Similarly to brain-dead or digitalized bodies, they constitute an ambiguous form of post-mortem existence. The article inquires after the ways in which the ontological status of these entities is constituted through the practices of body donors, anatomists and visitors. Plastinates owe their ambiguity to an oscillation between two different frames of perception. Their meaning is determined by the extent to which an anatomy exhibition can impose a ‘medical gaze’ over a non-professional way of perception, …
Scholarly discussion as engineering the meanings of a European cultural heritage
2016
The vague concept of a European cultural heritage is frequently referred to – but rarely explicitly defined – in scholarly discussion. The use of the concept in academia constructs a European cultural heritage as a category in research and explicitly and implicitly produces its focuses and outlines. Thus, the use of the concept can be considered as scholarly engineering of a European cultural heritage. To be able to have a scholarly discussion about a European cultural heritage, the meanings and uses of the concept need to be clarified. This article examines the meanings and uses of the concept in recent scholarly articles published in various disciplines. In the study, the concept analysi…
Let’s Play Tinder! Aesthetics of a Dating App
2019
This article provides an analysis of the “dating app” Tinder as an aesthetic ludic artifact. By scrutinizing the title’s features of gameplay and expressive–interpretive social interaction, Tinder usage is set into a frame theory context and shown to operate by multiple overlapping frames that allow romantic engagement to be entered as play and vice versa.
Embodying the nation: The production of sameness and difference in national-day parades
2018
National-day parades constitute a common format of embodying the nation. Composed of numerous distinct bodies of persons with individual characteristics (being short or tall) and multilayered societal roles (being a nurse, a father etc.), parades primarily evoke an image of sameness, while they also display differences. Focusing on the preparation of the Burkinabè national-day parades, this paper explores practices of disciplining bodies and making them appear similar and/or different. We ask how national-day parades mirror and produce images of the nation and how they treat differences like sex, ethnic belonging and occupation. The paper highlights that performances of the nation, as prod…
Block 21 and the Pensabilità of the Representation of Auschwitz
2012
Abstract Building on the assumption that the Memorial in Honor of Italians Fallen in Nazi Extermination Camps (situated in Auschwitz I, Block 21) expresses the meta-reflexive inclination that strengthened the twentieth century (the capacity of that century to think of itself as a subject), this article aims to highlight and illustrate the dual philosophical significance of the Memorial. From the perspective of the philosophy of history, this philosophical significance, which has a symbolic value, leads us to investigate an organic and historically embodied conception of deportation. From the perspective of the aesthetics of memory, this philosophical meaning offers a new framework for the …
Schlock horror and pillow punches
2019
As an introduction to this special themed journal issue on violent clowns, this paper provides an overview of the 14 contributions that examine the comic appeal of violence in culture. It also ties...
Aesthetics and Bildung
2012
The article approaches the educational potential of aesthetics and the arts by reviving the notion of Bildung and suggesting an interpretation that emphasizes both its social character and the role of artworks and other aesthetic expressions. Bildung is a dialogic process where human relationships are crucial both for the exchange and the birth of insights. Artworks are described as images (Bilde), which act as intermediaries and points of reference in expressing, communicating and negotiating cultural values. In developing the argument, Immanuel Kant's analysis of aesthetic judgment is read together with his ideas on enlightenment, highlighting the social and political character of judgmen…