[spectre] fwd: CFP: Inactivity: Between Aesthetic Practice and Sociopolitical Challenge (Berlin, 11-12 Jul 24)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Oliver Aas
Date: Mar 18, 2024
Subject: CFP: Between Aesthetic Practice and Sociopolitical Challenge 
(Berlin, 11-12 Jul 24)

ICI Berlin, Jul 11–12, 2024
Deadline: Apr 7, 2024

Inactivity: Between Aesthetic Practice and Sociopolitical Challenge.

Organized by Oliver Aas, Hana Gründler, Antje Kempe, and Barbara 
Kristina Murovec

A workshop of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – 
Max-Planck-Institute, Research Group ‘Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual’ 
and University Greifswald, Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea 
Region Research, in cooperation with the ICI Berlin (Institute for 
Cultural Inquiry).

At least since the Enlightenment, Western culture has been in the echo 
chambers of autonomy and its ethos of a rational, active, and ultimately 
self-creating and self-serving individual subject. Unlike in antiquity, 
when the fragile relation between otium and negotium was thought 
fundamental for the well-being of the (free) individual and society, 
today inactivity has become an increasingly problematic and, to a 
certain extent, morally and politically destabilizing category. Not too 
surprisingly, the French socialist Paul Lafargue’s claim that, next to 
the right to work, there should be a ‘right to be lazy’ (1883) was 
harshly criticized. His position, inspired by ancient philosophy, was 
reproached by socialist and capitalist perspectives. Significantly, in 
today’s age of hyperactivity, 24/7 accessibility, and accelerationism, 
one hears of the need to slow down, to do less (or indeed nothing at 
all), and to contemplate. The interest in (in)action — slow cinema, and 
even slow food and other so-called practices of ‘self-care’ — becomes 
steadily more important to artistic practices and in academic 
discourses. But what are the narratives behind this development? Are 
there different forms of inaction, some perceived as ‘productive’, and 
others as ‘destructive’? Can inaction be a progressive gesture ‘of 
doing’ at a moment when classical ‘actions’ have exhausted themselves? 
Would that also apply to a hypercapitalized and accelerated art market 
and exhibition system?

This workshop aims to critically examine artistic, literary, 
philosophical, and political strategies and practices of inaction. It 
looks at how these practices, on one hand, work against dominant 
cultural and political narratives and, on the other, are absorbed by 
capitalism and ultimately become neoliberal adjuncts to prevailing 
economic and political systems. The focus of the workshop will be on 
artistic and aesthetic practices from the early twentieth century until 
today, since they offer a particularly fertile testing ground for 
thinking through strategies of action and inaction. One example might be 
found with so-called unofficial artists, writers, and intellectuals in 
totalitarian or post-totalitarian systems. They could not afford to 
protest in plain sight and thus often chose non-assuming and perhaps 
counter-intuitive strategies like leisure, ambivalence, and irony for 
staging their resistance. Also, Eastern European performance art, for 
example, has long demonstrated that inaction can structure the artist’s 
presence as much as (if not more eloquently than) action. Here, the 
typical action, which with its Western connotations is often imagined to 
lead to a romanticized version of revolution, is subverted.

At the same time, conceptualizing inaction as an agent of change — also 
in the sense of contemplation as basis of creativity — comes with its 
pitfalls. When does inaction simply become a willful act of ignorance? 
As Hannah Arendt has elucidated, we have been witnesses to mass 
atrocities that we have refused to acknowledge, which alerts us to 
exercise caution when it comes to doing nothing. In this light, 
individual positions like ‘opting out’ and departing from sociopolitical 
life (e.g., abstaining from voting) become highly problematic. After 
all, who is free to ‘opt out’ and who remains helplessly stuck?

Also of interest are cultural and artistic practices that thematize 
inactivity as forms of resistance, resilience, or counter-movement in 
the broader field of heritage discourses, conservation, and art history, 
as well as within the museum context. The aim is to discuss, on the one 
hand, whether decay is understood as a kind of inactivity that causes a 
revaluation of objects, sites, and practices in terms of negation or 
negotiation. On the other hand, the aim is to interrogate how to 
interpret inactivity regarding questioned monuments, events, and places 
without sticking to the binarity of ‘productive’ or ‘destructive’ 
discourses. Does decay as process — and/or doing nothing as practice in 
the above-mentioned fields — also become an agent of change or, 
referring to the Aristotelian philosophy, counter-energeia in times of 
political and ecological crises?

The historical longue durée — starting with vita contemplativa and its 
contemporary relevance and adaptability — and the conceptual complexity 
of ‘inactivity’ require further analysis. Many of inactivity’s 
manifestations in artistic and aesthetic practices, in political 
actions, and in everyday life forms remain undertheorized. The interest 
of the workshop is therefore in concrete, historically-grounded case 
studies and broader systematic-methodological approaches that help us 
conceptualize and re-vise well-known narratives of inactivity, mostly in 
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but also in accounts that 
tackle the longue durée. The organizers thus invite scholars from art 
history, philosophy, sociology, literature, and related fields, and 
those who work in different geographical areas, to present a short talk 
of about 25 minutes (followed by a discussion).

Please send an abstract of max. 2,000 characters and a short bio (in one 
pdf) in English by email to oliver.aas at khi.fi.it

The submission deadline is 7 April 2024.

Feedback on workshop participation as well as information on lodging and 
travel reimbursement will be provided by 22 April 2024.

https://www.ici-berlin.org/call-for-papers-inactivity/


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Between Aesthetic Practice and Sociopolitical Challenge (Berlin, 
11-12 Jul 24). In: ArtHist.net, Mar 18, 2024. 
<https://arthist.net/archive/41459>.