Courses 2024-2026
Seminar (with Prof. Markus Klammer): Participatory Art and Relational Aesthetics
Participatory art has established itself as a genre in recent decades. It understands art not as a presentation of objects to an audience, but as an invitation to interaction and dialogue, as a creation of social situations and relationships. This approach remains controversial to this day: Nicolas Bourriaud celebrated it under the term “relational aesthetics”; Claire Bishop, on the other hand, criticized such works as “artificial hells.” In this seminar, we will examine artistic approaches in this field and discuss their interpretation in art theory and aesthetics.
Seminar: Luigi Nono: Music as Political Commitment
The seminar offers an introduction to a fundamental problem in music philosophy that preoccupies contemporary music: Can music be a form of political engagement? The seminar will explore this question in depth, using the works of composer Luigi Nono as a guide. Throughout his life, Luigi Nono understood his music as a factor in his commitment to communism, but developed very different musical-political strategies in his various creative phases. In the seminar, Nono's musical works will be confronted with theoretical texts by Hanns Eisler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodor W. Adorno, Lydia Goehr, and others, which articulate classical positions in the debate about the relationship between art and politics. The seminar is aimed at students of philosophy, musicology, and various courses at the Basel Academy of Music. As part of the seminar, participants will attend a performance of Luigi Nono's work Intolleranza at the Theater Basel.
Introduction to the Aesthetics of Music: Basic Concepts and Constellations
This course provides an introduction to the philosophical aesthetics of music. The first part of this two-semester course focuses on basic concepts of music: What distinguishes a musical sound from noise? What are rhythm, harmony and melody? What are musical functions, styles and forms? How can the beauty, expressiveness or intelligence of sounds be conceptualised? And how do such musical questions relate to social situations and subjective experiences? In the second semester, we will explore historical constellations of philosophical aesthetics and musical practices in some revolutionary moments in music history: Ars Nova, Seconda Prattica, Empfindsamkeit, Romanticism, Gesamtkunstwerk, Atonality and Electronic Music. These concepts will be explored by studying classical texts and musical works from the history of musical aesthetics.
Seminar: Philosophy of Fiction
In everyday understanding, fiction is considered falsehood and facts are considered truth. In art, this seemingly certain distinction is shaken. Here we encounter fiction that is valid, accurate, convincing, and in a certain sense true, even though or precisely because it does not refer to facts. The same applies to statements we make about such fictional circumstances, entities, and worlds. How can this peculiar binding nature of fiction be explained? In this seminar, we will study the most important positions in the philosophical debate that has arisen in recent decades around the concept of fiction
Seminar: Music and Meaning
Music is regarded as an art form that, unlike literature, film or painting, does not represent. It is therefore said to be a meaningless play with forms. Against this position, it is often argued that music would not mean so much to us if it did not articulate any meaning itself. In the seminar, we will explore this controversy about the meaning and significance of music on the basis of a specific case: The music of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and its interpretation by Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). Mahler's enigmatic symphonic music displays an extraordinary variety of ways of meaning. Adorno's monograph Mahler.Eine musikalische Physiognomik reveals this complexity and can therefore be read as a philosophical attempt to answer the question of the meaning of music.
Seminar: Materialist Theories of Art
In contemporary discourses of art theory and culture studies, new accounts of materialisms abound. They are in general opposed to the historical materialism of the Marxist tradition: they try to understand cultural production within a naturalist framework. The history of Marx-inspired art theory, in contrast, was highly prolific in articulating sophisticated connections between artistic forms and their material conditions – their social, political and economic contexts. The seminar introduces and discusses some of these materialist art theory, from Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukacs, Max Raphael, the Frankfurt School to Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton, T.J. Clark, Pierre Macherey, Jacques Rancière and beyond. What they share is the idea that, in many different ways, artistic and cultural production, despite its ideological functions, can be read as point of contention within the coercions of contemporary capitalism.
Seminar: Composing Affects: Emotions in Early Modern Music and Philosophy
It is common sense to say that music triggers emotions. But how is it possible that mere sounds are heard as expressions of feelings? How to compose affect? And what do we actually mean when we talk about affects, emotions, feelings? These questions have been intensively debated during the Baroque period (ca. 1600-1750): In the theory of music (from Monteverdi, Praetorius, Werckmeister to Mattheson), but also in philosophy (from Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza up to Wollf). At the core of these controversies lies the problem of reconciling rationality and sensiblity. Drawing on some conceptual distinctions from the recent philosophy of emotions, we will study such constellations between philosophy, music theory and musical works in the Baroque age.
Seminar: Gilles Deleuze – Philosophy of Art
Hardly any philosophy of the 20th century has had such a strong influence on artistic production in recent decades as that of Gilles Deleuze. As stimulating as his writings are, they are also confusing. In this seminar, we will focus on his philosophy of art. We will critically examine his philosophical interpretations of the music of Pierre Boulez, the paintings of Francis Bacon, the novels of Franz Kafka, and the films of Alain Resnais. In examining these interpretations, we will attempt to reconstruct the theory of art that Deleuze himself never explicitly articulated. The seminar is aimed at students of philosophy, art history, literary studies, musicology, and students of the FHNW Academy of Music.
Seminar: How do we evaluate music?
When we talk about music, our speech usually contains an evaluation: we express our liking or dislike, name what we experience as moving, original, shocking, or beautiful, and what we find boring, tasteless, or kitschy. Some claim that such matters of taste cannot be disputed. The tradition of art criticism and aesthetics, on the other hand, defends the idea that even such judgments can be better or worse justified. But how can such statements about the success or failure of musical works be justified? In three block sessions, we will discuss works that we have previously experienced together in concert and, based on this, agree on the standards, benchmarks, or criteria that we apply in such debates.
Ringvorlesung: Gesellschaft in Transformation / Lecture series: Society in Transformation (in Studienplan MUST «Inputs aus Sozial-/Kulturwissenschaften und Anthropologie»)
Artistic means are subject to historical change: Musical techniques, scenic devices and visual forms are constantly being revisioned and renewed. It is often social transformations that initiate, drive or even force such artistic changes. Hence, art can express and reflect tendencies that shape contemporary life as a whole. The lectures of this series offer insights into such social transformations, which are the object of social sciences, anthropology, cultural studies and humanities. They shed light on controversies that shape the present and its images of the past.