DEM'ARTS cross-disciplinary seminar-Inaugural session

Yann Toma

Professor/Artist, Institut ACTE - Arts Créations Théories Esthétique, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne.

“Post-Creation, Towards a universalization of creation”

The concept of Post-Création involves a form of exteriority to an original Creation and engages intense aesthetic experiences that remain open and accessible to a broader public. The artistic act, charged with heuristic and critical potential, unfolds towards a different form outside the sphere of influence of the art world. The idea of post-creation tends towards the universality of conceiving creation beyond non-institutionalized academicism. We shall see how a possible emulation between ordinary aesthetics and the shared experience of Post-Creation is articulated and played out, where the experience of creation produces knowledge and transforms what is outside art's specific field of perception into new spaces of action and reflexivity. In this way, the influence of artistic creation on whole swathes of society, areas of perception hitherto inaccessible, becomes an issue of openness resulting from transforming a form of ordinary aesthetics into a Post-Creation freed from the aesthetic channels of contemporary art. The notion of Post-cinema will be examined.

Sandra Laugier

Professor/ Philosopher, Institut des sciences juridiques et philosophique de la Sorbonne.

“Culture and democracy, from pragmatism to the digital”

The democratization of art in the digital era, the constitution and circulation of a new set of values, extend the demand expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson and then John Dewey, for an art rooted in the experience of the spectator and in everyday life; an art that is not set apart from common experience. Dewey’s naturalistic aesthetics seeks to destroy the hold of an institutional philosophy of aesthetics that sharply distinguishes art from real life and refers it “to a separate domain” - the museum, the theater, or the concert hall. The development of cultural industries, digital technology for artistic creation and dissemination, and citizen involvement in art are all part of this lineage, rooted in aesthetic experience and the valorization of popular culture (Cavell, Shusterman). Cavell's work has made an essential contribution not only to consolidating respect for popular art and culture, but also to integrating technological innovation and the democratization of art into creation itself.

To counter the opposition between aesthetics and praxis, between creation and industry, it's a question of thinking about shared experience in terms of its ability to transmit social, ethical and political values. This involves thinking about creation within a new conceptual framework, that of the ICC and the concept of Post-creation (Toma). The influence of creation on whole swathes of society becomes an essential issue for an ordinary aesthetic (Formis) grounded in digital art and in the skills of citizens.