Connectivity as Aesthetic Practice

Aesthetic practices employ a double-hinged movement in the way they refer to connectivity. On the one hand, it seems as if connectivity in its purely functional orientation toward communicating through digital media is in itself responsible for having produced aesthetic practices and their social fields of action. On the other hand, it is precisely these aesthetic practices that, in the field of contemporary culture, elaborate the desiderata of connectivity beyond the territorial gaps they already mark out in the social and cultural sciences.

Nicolaj van der Meulen and Jorg Wiesel are the heads of the newly founded Institut Asthetische Praxis und Theorie at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Northwestern Switzerland.