6.3.2025 UNCERTAINTY AESTHETIC MANIFESTATIONS IN-DEPTH SYMPOSIUM

UNCERTAINTY AESTHETIC MANIFESTATIONS IN-DEPTH SYMPOSIUM
THURSDAY, 6 MARCH 2025, 9:15 – 18:30
How does art capture and shape our encounters with the unknown? Building on our broader exploration of uncertainty’s existential and epistemic dimensions within the Uncertainty Symposia series, we devote a special day to the aesthetic dimensions of uncertainty—examining how artistic practices foreground and negotiate uncertainty as an essential element of human experience. We will consider how art across literature, visual media, and music both reflects and shapes our emotional and cognitive responses to life’s inherent unpredictability.
Drawing on historical-theoretical and cognitive-scientific approaches, we ask: Does aesthetic  experience reduce uncertainty, or does it deepen our engagement with the unknown? Does art impose order through form-making, or does it expose the limits of representation? Is uncertainty an inherent condition of aesthetic experience, and how do the two interrelate in terms of underlying structures or cognitive processes? Through rigorous analysis, our work seeks to elucidate the relationship between art and uncertainty, advancing our understanding of how creative practices inform and transform our engagement with indeterminacy.

SPEAKERS:
Maria Brincker (University of Massachusetts Boston), Sebastian Egenhofer (University
of Vienna), Philipp Ekardt (University of Konstanz), Vittorio Gallese (University of Parma),
Markus Klammer (University of Basel), Christine Knoop (Max Planck Institute for
Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main), Aaron Kozbelt (Brooklyn College, CUNY, New
York), Darío Negueruela del Castillo (Center for Digital Visual Studies, Max-Planck Society/
University of Zurich), Martin Rohrmeier (EPFL, Lausanne), Alfonsina Scarinzi (University
of Göttingen/ Ca‘ Foscari University of Venice)

LOCATION
Rämistrasse 59, 8001 Zürich; RAA-G-01 (small AULA)

Organized by
Dr. Polina Lukicheva, Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich
Dr. Darío Negueruela del Castillo, Center for Digital Visual Studies, Max Planck Society/
University of Zurich
Acknowledging the assistance of
Yves Trachsel, Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich
Pepe Ballesteros Zapata, Center for Digital Visual Studies, Max Planck Society /
University of Zurich