Art and Visual Thinking

Can the visible be regarded as the medium of a specific kind of thinking and can art production and reception serve as a model thereof? How analogous or different is such a thinking to traditional notions of rationality and scientific method? The discussion will address these issues  with regard to contexts like philosophical aesthetics, conceptual art with its affinity to the discursive, or contemporary requests of knowledge society.

Lässt sich das Visuelle als Medium einer spezifischen Art des Denkens begreifen und können Kunstproduktion und -rezeption dafür modellhaft sein?
Wie analog oder different verhält sich ein solches Denken zu dem, was man traditionell unter Rationalität und Wissenschaftlichkeit versteht? Die Diskussion will diese Fragen mit Bezug auf Kontexte wie die philosophische Ästhetik, die Konzeptkunst mit ihrer spezifischen Affinität zum Diskursiven oder gegenwärtige Anforderungen der Wissensgesellschaft erörtern.

Alexander García Düttmann is Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art. He has lectured internationally, and published widely, on topics related to art. His most recent books include Participation: Consciousness of Semblance (Konstanz University Press 2011) and Naive Art: An Essay on Happiness (August Verlag; with an afterword by Christoph Menke).

Victor Burgin is currently Millard Professor of Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Professor Emeritus of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz. His cross-disciplinary work bridges media, culture and art. In Thinking Photography (1982), Victor Burgin demands a new photography theory that must be interdisciplinary and must engage not only with techniques of photographic production but, more importantly, with processes of signification.