ISTP 2026 Conference
“Theorizing in Dark Times – Art, Narrative, Politics”
June 8 – June 12, 2026 | Brooklyn, NY, USA
Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Session Overview |
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Symposium: Art is no Tool
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Art is no tool (ONLINE) Lev S. Vygotsky claimed in the 1920´s, on his writings on aesthetic education, that “the imposition on esthetics of yet other goals and problems that are likewise foreign to it” could be considered a harmful psychological confusion (Vygotky, 1926). The aim of this symposium is precisely to accept this challenge – to cultivate Art´s autonomous existence and importance; but at the same time, not to treat Aeshtetics as a separate domain from others such as Psychology or Social Sciences in general. Presentations in this symposium will make an attempt to approach that alledged autonomy, through empirical examples such as cultural performances and political protests in Brazil, but also by theoretical exercises in which the status of Art is pushed to a limit – a limit where other knowledges and practices might also meet. Presentations of the Symposium Relearning the meaning of Art: in day's where we tend to believe to know all about Art (ONLINE) While the "Western" believe that "art is the artefact" is consequently more present in the global perspective, it becomes crucial to challeng such a "objective" stance in itself. The current position of research to art shifts strongly from challenging the known by the awerness of its dynamic nature to blindly obeying the believed former definition of its meaning. Instead of doubting the own truth, the believed fact is whorshiped and a trend emerges in which Psychologists "know better" then the artist's themself what they mean --intend to say. Hold on! Art is dynamic and bonded to the present. Art has in general many rules but during the performance of an individual non of these rules have to count for the performer themself. There is no space for observer to know the perfromance meaning better then the artists, when the artists are the only experts of their experience. While value, and symbols can be extracted from the artist themself retrospectively or from external perspectives, this does not mean that those extraction represent art! In contrary such perspectives often represent an out-come from a dialogue as observer with the artefact, while art in its origine is persisting in the hidden moments of performing and experiencing in itself. Do not misunderstand this statment, by saying that there is no art in an observation of an artefact. The observation itself is part of artistic actions but not of the initialising art in observation. The interpretation is not necessarily part of the art performance as we tend to believe. The artist can have an intention to impact the audience, nevertheless the process "performance" and the actual experience of the observing otherness stay in two different spheres. Spheres that might cross each other in the moment of performance and observation..which leads us to the cote point of this presentation "What is art and how can we work with such a vivid concept framework in the the dark day's? And finaly what is art when it leaves the spectrum of tools? Can Art Save Psychology? Or Is That the Wrong Question? (ONLINE) Contemporary psychology increasingly turns to art and aesthetics in response to perceived disciplinary fragmentation, loss of meaning, and methodological exhaustion. This turn often carries an implicit hope: that aesthetic experience might restore what psychology has lost. Drawing on Vygotsky’s early writings on aesthetics, particularly his warning against imposing “foreign goals” on art, this presentation will argue that such hopes risk repeating a familiar psychological confusion, of treating art as a means rather than as a distinct mode of human meaning-making. Rather than asking whether art can save psychology, I suggest that aesthetic experience confronts psychology with its own limits: limits of explanation, optimization, and intervention. Art does not offer solutions to psychology’s current crises; instead, it demands epistemic humility and a rethinking of psychology’s relation to cultural practices it cannot fully appropriate. By reframing art not as a resource to be used but as a domain that resists instrumentalization, tI propose a more careful coexistence between aesthetics and psychology—one that honors art’s autonomy while remaining in dialogue with psychological inquiry. Social coreographies in contemporary Brazil: transforming social and political order (ONLINE) Inspired by the questions that are raised by the theme of this conference, I intend to present and discuss Andrew Hewitt´s (2005) concept of social coreography, in which aesthetic is not purely superestructural or ideological, but is actually operates at the very base of social experience. The aesthetics, he argues, will function as a space in which social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. After describing two distinct dimensions in social choreography – one tracing the ways in which everyday experience might be aestheticized, and another in which “the aesthetics” is sectioned off and delineated as a distinct realm of experience, I present three examples of social coreographies in Brazil – the theatrical play Pele Negra, Máscaras Brancas [Black Skin, White Masks], the cultural performance Nego Fugido [Nego Fugido] and the musical acts that took place in Rio de Janeiro against Brazilian Congress in 2025. These artistic actions, through distinct mechanisms which will be presented and explained, become examples of renewed articulations between aesthetics and politics: if art art has historically been seen as a reflect of society´s organization,these contemporary artworks and manifestations suggest an inversion of that relation. | ||

