Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1041944
4 maltatoday | SUNDAY 21 OCTOBER 2018 THIS WEEK MUSIC Ahead of the fifth edition of its annual international conference, co- organiser Kurt Borg speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about why 'Reconfiguring the Aesthetic' was chosen as the theme of this year's Engaging the Contemporary event Given that the event has now hit the half-decade mark, could you give us a potted history of Engaging the Contemporary, and how its aims and dynamics have evolved over these five years? The Engaging the Contemporary series, organised by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Malta, started with a seminar in 2014 on the philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida on the (thirtieth and tenth respectively) anniversary of their death. The seminar was intended to get scholars together to discuss the work of Foucault and Derrida, espe- cially extensions and uses of their work beyond its original confines. A year later, the seminar focused on the work of another two great contem- porary philosophers, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière, whose work on politics, aesthetics and history is very influential. That year's seminar also attracted the attention of scholars out- side the University of Malta who came to Malta to deliver research papers. As a result of these international collabo- rations, future editions of the seminar became international conferences. For example, in 2016, the confer- ence considered Speculative Realism, a relatively new philosophical 'move- ment', in relation to Phenomenology. Last year resulted in the greatest En- gaging the Contemporary conference in terms of size with over 40 speakers from around 30 different universities delivering papers on issues in contem- porary political philosophy and social theory. What we achieved last year was a cul- mination of the aims that shaped all Engaging the Contemporary editions, namely an attempt to engage with the latest developments in the field of phi- losophy, and to analyse these concerns while keeping in mind contemporary times. Contrary to many misconcep- tions of philosophy, we firmly believe that philosophy doesn't happen in a vacuum but within historical and so- cial contexts to which philosophical ideas react and give new meanings. It is these aims which motivate this year's conference. What kind of contribution do you hope the conference can have on the intellectual culture in and around the University of Malta? Would you say the international dimension is crucial to this? It's not easy to 'measure' the contribution of such an event. Primarily, Engaging the Contemporary is an academic conference that valorizes the coming together of academics and graduate students to present academically rigorous papers about topics they are researching. But, while true, that is a very boring way of putting it! We're fond of the term "engaging" in our conference series. Thus, rather than limit itself to a number of experts in the field, we want to provide a space for people to come together and, through their research, engage with salient features of contemporary culture. This is not just academic work for its own sake. We are interested in how philosophical ideas old and new can speak to the contemporary, and in how philosophy can shed new light on old problems. Moreover, we seek to do this by opening up the conference to discourses from other disciplines. Academic conferences can be very insulated and restrictive. Engaging the Contemporary challenges this tendency by, while rooting itself in philosophy, recognising that philosophical debates have to be understood in dialogue with other disciplines. For example, this year, on the theme of aesthetics and art, we will have papers from philosophy researchers, but also from perspectives of cognitive science, politics, urban studies, gender studies, musicians, literary theory, and disability studies. This is a very positive feature of the conference. We cannot expect to truly engage the contemporary if we do not adopt a multi-faceted approach to the- oretical problems. So, a contribution of this conference is that it brings together scholars from the University of Malta and beyond in the spirit of genuine inter-disciplinari- ty. The international dimension surely helps in this regard: speakers from other universities and other countries bring with them different geographi- cal and cultural influences which fur- ther illuminate the conference themes. Moreover, the conference enables new research ties and connections to be made. The theme of this year's conference is 'Reconfiguring the Aesthetic'. How would you say this theme coheres and builds on previous editions of the conference, and why did you think it is a particularly relevant (if not urgent) topic Teodor Reljic Aesthetics across intellectual currents Painting