Toward a Sustainable Attitude: Aesthetics, the Arts, and the Environment
Together with NYU Tandon and Universität Bern, on October 6-8 2022, Ca’ Foscari hosts the international conference “Toward a Sustainable Attitude: Aesthetics, the Arts, and the Environment”. Set in the Aula Magna of Ca’ Dolfin, the conference investigates sustainability challenges from a philosophical and artistic perspective.
Two aspects will be explored particularly, the first one related to the way sustainability is sensed and understood in different cultural and social contexts, the other one to the way artists contribute to the debate on sustainability at an experiential and conceptual level.
The conference is based on the fieldwork done in art and sustainability at Ca’ Foscari in the last eight years, especially through the Sustainable Art Prize founded by Sustainable Ca’ Foscari at the art fair of ArtVerona and its subsequent public art projects developed in Venice.
The conference is organised and funded by Ca’ Foscari’s Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities at the Department of Humanities, Sustainable Ca’ Foscari and the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage.
- poster
1.35 M
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Toward a Sustainable Attitude: Aesthetics, the Arts, and the Environment
Venice, October 6-8, 2022
Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Aula Magna Ca’ Dolfin and Aula Baratto Ca’ Foscari
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
October 6, 2022
Aula Magna, Ca’ Dolfin
14:00 GREETINGS
Maria Del Valle Ojeda Calvo (Vice Rector for Research, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Luigi Perissinotto (Member of the Board of Governors, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Franz Fischer (Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities, Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
14:30 PANEL 1 – Chair: Roberta Dreon (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
14:30 Emily Brady (Texas A&M University), Aesthetics, Ecology, and Community
15:00 Paolo D'Angelo (Roma Tre University), Sustainability and Environmental Art
15:30 DISCUSSION
16:00 COFFEE BREAK
16:30 PANEL 2 – Chair: Diego Mantoan (University of Palermo)
16:30 Laia Anguix (Trnavská univerzita v Trnave), The dirty patrons: environmental sustainability and museum sponsorship
17:00 Vanessa Badagliacca (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), An aesthetics of Minimal Resources. Colombia and Environmental issues in Alicia Barney’s Work (1975-1981)
17:30 DISCUSSION
18:15 SUSTAINABLE ART CONVERSATION 1: Protagonism and Antagonism
Markus Reymann (Ocean Space)
Paolo Cirio (independent artist)
discuss with
Carolina Fernandez Castrillo (Universidad Carlos III Madrid)
19:00 OPENING OF SOLAR PROTOCOL
Sustainable art installation by Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson and Benedetta Piantella, New York University Tandon – curated by Diego Mantoan and produced by VeDPH with Sustainable Ca’ Foscari
19:30 END OF DAY 1
20:00 SPEAKERS’ DINNER
_________________________________________
FRIDAY MORNING
October 7, 2022
Aula Magna, Ca’ Dolfin
9:00 PANEL 3 – Chair: Elisa Caldarola (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
9:00 Heather Diack (University of Miami), Dolphins in Venice: Climate Crisis, Credibility, and the Life of Images
9:30 Madalina Diaconu (Universität Wien), Leave No Traces – A paradigm change in the Anthropocene?
10:00 Nicole Annette Hall (Texas A&M University), Virtue Appreciation & Sustainability
10:30 DISCUSSION
11:15 COFFEE BREAK
11:45 PANEL 4 – Chair: Elisabetta Di Stefano (University of Palermo)
11:45 Alberto Siani (University of Pisa), Re-centering Aesthetics: Toward a Pragmatist Paradigm for Landscape Character
12:15 Michaela Schäuble (Universität Bern), Of spiders, dead olive trees and industrial contamination: an artistic-ethnographic site visit in Puglia
12:45 DISCUSSION
13:15 END OF MORNING, DAY 2
_________________________________________
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
October 7, 2022
Aula Magna, Ca’ Dolfin
14:30 PANEL 5 – Chair: Alberto Siani (University of Pisa)
14:30 Piergiorgio Donatelli (Sapienza University of Rome), Perfectionism and the value of nature
15:00 Olga Smith (Universität Wien), Strategies of Resistance as Ecocritical Aesthetics
15:30 Elisa Caldarola (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Natural objects: independent, situated, and situational
16:00 DISCUSSION
16:30 COFFEE BREAK
17:00 PANEL 6 – Chair: Alberto Pirni (Sant’Anna Pisa)
17:00 Elisabetta Di Stefano (University of Palermo), Frugality. An aesthetic category for a sustainable art of living
17:30 Elena Romagnoli (Freie Universität Berlin), Sustainability through situatedness. A hermeneutical approach
18:00 DISCUSSION
18:45 SUSTAINABLE ART CONVERSATION 2: Norms and Forms
Jonathan Soffer (NYU Tandon)
Peter Schneemann (Universität Bern)
Benedetta Piantella (NYU Tandon)
Anna Mazzon (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
discuss with
Diego Mantoan (University of Palermo)
19:30 – END OF DAY 2
________________________________________
SATURDAY MORNING
October 8, 2022
Aula Baratto, Ca’ Foscari
9:30 PANEL 7 – Chair: Gioia Laura Iannilli (University of Bologna)
9:30 Alberto Pirni (Sant’Anna Pisa), Motivational Models for Climate Change-Sensitive Agents
10:00 Kira Meyer (Universität Kiel), Cultural services as a reason for strong sustainability
10:30 Paolo Furia (University of Turin), The Great Green Wall Initiative. From “acting upon” to “acting with” landscape
11:00 Roberta Dreon (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Sensibility and Interest: Toward a Sustainable Attitude
11:30 DISCUSSION
12:00 VENETIAN APERITIVO
PHOTO: Sasha Vinci, "A Human Flower Wall" (2019), Performance New York City, courtesy the artist and aA29 Project Room, ph. credits Margaryta Bushkin
SOLAR PROTOCOL
a sustainable art installation
October 6-7, 2022 >> 9:00-19:00
Aula Magna Ca’ Dolfin, Dorsoduro 3825/D, Venice
by Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella (NYU Tandon)
curated by Diego Mantoan (University of Palermo)
assistant curators Silvia Ballarin and Francesca Barea (Ca’ Foscari University)
On the occasion of the international conference “Toward a Sustainable Attitude: Aesthetics, the Arts, and the Environment” at Ca’ Foscari University, the artists Tega Brain, Benedetta Piantella, and Alex Nathanson of New York University have their seminal work Solar Protocol installed in the Aula Magna of Ca’ Dolfin. Their project stigmatizes the necessity to rethink global server networks that feed the internet in a democratic and sustainable way. The three artists created a global server network fed by self-made solar panels and steward servers, whose varying battery level is reflected on the aesthetic of the mediatic transmission.
- Solar Protocol poster
781 K - Curatorial Note
111 K
The Venetian exhibit of Solar Protocol presents the viewer with a large disc suspended in the Baroque hall of the 18th century Ca’ Dolfin palace onto which a circular diagram is being projected, thus showing the last 72 hours of the solar server network’s functioning. In doing so, interconnection and intermittence, which lie at the heart of this artistic project, find a plastic form and utter their importance for a new way to make the internet sustainable.
The sustainable art installation is funded and organized by Ca’ Foscari’s Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities at the Department of Humanities and by Sustainable Ca’ Foscari with the collaboration of New York University Tandon School of Engineering.
Last update: 17/04/2024