180162 SE Readings in Performance Philosophy (2022S)

This seminar will seek to engage with the emerging field of performance philosophy. We will map the contexts and consequences of a mode of thinking and doing that responds to the need to identify philosophy as a form of action in its own right, and certain artistic and/or design practices as, in a certain sense, legitimate modes of philosophy too.
Engaging with performance philosophy invariably involves reflecting on one’s routine assumptions about what it means to do what we do (be it philosophy, art, design or in fact any other form of practice) by what means, with recourse to what media, how, where, when, with, and for, whom? This critical reflection affects in turn one’s sensitivity to the relationship between form and content (an essential concern of any artistic or literary practice), as well as to the modes in which philosophical thought is generated and delivered, to the dramaturgical staging in which it is communicated, and to the interconnected aesthetical and ethico-political consequences of these complex relations. Reading or encountering performance philosophy involves exploring the boundaries of that practice itself in particular the relationship between text and body as well as the possibility, perhaps, of incorporating different modes of semiotic digestion, including, for instance, practices of listening, that open towards a novel understanding of the purpose and potential scope of philosophical thinking and doing.
The class will consider, discuss and seek to respond to a range of materials related to the upcoming Performance Philosophy biennale which is to be held at theUniversity of the Arts in Helsinki in June 2022. There is also the option of establishing a potentially fruitful correspondence with students of design who are currently engaging with Alice Lagaay on a similar topic but from a different point of view at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg.