Why Theory?

In times when norms of commerce and technology seem to pervade all activities, the example of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht stands out. Until its recent entrepreneurial recasting under austerity measures, the Academie had been a site of encounters which had surpassed the sterile confines of academia and the consensual norms of market-oriented work: it welcomed examinations and radical critiques of the spaces of artistic creation, theoretical inquiry and design, while also questioning the relations and boundaries between these fields.

Building upon this experience, while at the same time surpassing its institutional limitations, it was our intention to construct a platform for collaboration between theorists, designers and artists by suspending the borders between their respective disciplines, by affirming the need for collective and experimental work, by engaging in projects which do not shy away from questioning the very possibilities of different domains, whether aesthetic, scientific or political. Within the framework of a three-day inaugural meeting, we presented and discussed works in design, art and theory by people formerly related to or supporting the Academie as well as others who are joining us. A series of lectures and performances, seminars and screenings, as well as displays of works and book presentations served not only as materials for a broader discussion, but also as a nucleus for future collaborative work.Monday 15 July
10:30 Welcome
10:45 Pietro Bianchi: Looking With No Eyes. The Lacanian Gaze and the Problem of Formalization of the Visual Field
11:15 Alan Smart: How to Design?

11:45 Coffee Break

12:15 Jonathan Short: On the Sovereignty of Value
12:45 Sami Khatib: Non-Realist Realism, Notes on Benjamin and Brecht
13:15 Benjamin Dawson: Why Practice?

13:45-15:45 Lunch Break

15:45 Nathaniel Boyd: Who Thinks Concretely? Hegel’s Critique of Political Abstraction
16:15 Agon Hamza: Žižek’s Althusser on Ideology

16:45-17:15 Coffee Break

17:15 Simone van Dijken: Mumbling with the Devil (performance)
18:00 Katja Kolšek: Chinese Language, Unconscious, and Poetry
18:30 Mladen Dolar: Officers, Maids and Chimneysweepers

Tuesday 16 July
10:30 Gregor Moder: Why Not?
11:00 Alfie Brown: Divine Violence
11:30 Frank Ruda: The Ontico-Ontological Indifference

12:00-12:30 Coffee Break

12:30 Alexander Negrelli: Render Farm Apocalypse – On Digital Production Design
13:00 Giuseppe Bianco: French Philosophy. Analytic Philosophy and its Continental Roots
13:30 Tzuchien Tho: Jules Vuillemin. From French Epistemology and History of Science to Analytic Philosophy and back

14:00-16:00 Lunch Break

16:00 Olivier Surel: Why Reclaim Naturalism as Critical Theory?
16:30 Oxana Timofeeva: Why Cats?
17:00 Gal Kirn: Encounter between Cinema and Communism: Notes on Medvedkin’s Kinopoezd

17:30-18:00 Coffee Break

18:00 Stéphane Querrec and Anu Pennanen ‘Staande!/Debout!’ video + talk