FAF is a new dedicated forum to reflect on art and ethics in contemporary society. Every month we will invite an esteemed philosopher of art, curator, or artist to critically think about the urgent and sometimes challenging questions surrounding art today. For example: Can we experience art through digital means? Is it wrong to enjoy the work of immoral artists? What should happen with public sculptures that glorify a colonial or racist past? FAF will take place every last Thursday of the month during term time at FUMA, the Flinders Museum of Art.
Join us on Thursday 28 October 2021 for the third instalment of FAF with Robert Phiddian and Alex Cothren. Satirists present themselves as in the rational art of exposing foolishness and error, but many different threads of provocation and response are subsumed under the idea of ‘getting the joke'.
Robert Phiddian’s contribution will attend to the way that satire mobilises the ‘moral’, ‘harsh’, or ‘negative’ emotions, particularly the triad identified in neuroscience as CAD- contempt, anger, and disgust. He will address philosophical and psychological accounts of these emotions to argue that they are an integral element of satirical affect. Meanwhile, Alex Cothren will introduce the concept of 'participant zero' in the satirical equation- real-life people who are represented in a satiric work, and may be harmed by it, though they are not the target of the work's attack. Alex will illustrate how this concept works in his recently published fiction “A short history of guns in America”, showing the way that attending to the aesthetics of a piece (is it funny? Is it unique) naturally leads to ethical issues.
Parking on university campus is free after 5pm.
More info, please contact Dr Tom Cochrane a:: flindersaestheticsforum@gmail.com
