„Why do you turn that moment of mystery where you’re not sure what’s going on immediately into rage? Why does it have to be transformed into rage? Could it be transformed into something else like curiosity, concern, interest, acknowledgement that maybe this particular thing isn’t to do with you? It’s ok sometimes for things not to be to do with you.“

(Zadie Smith)

"...to include an enjoyment that doesn’t derive from filling a void,
or love that is not merely balm for a wound. So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself.
Some would call that an ethics."
(Maggie Nelson)

Welcome to my homepage.

I am a philosopher and Chair Professor for Art Theory and Artistic Practice at the Medical School Hamburg offering

  • Articles and Papers, both academic and non-academic
  • Lecture Performances / Performative Talks
  • Philosophical Shows
  • Workshops and Seminars

In the different sections you will find further information on my activities.

My main focus lies in the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and everyday life. Currently, I am writing a book on Politics and Aesthetics of Doubts.
Denying doubts and denying the value of doubts is disastrous, because unchanging and indubitable identity is a fiction, which can only be established and maintained through structural, indirect, or direct violence.

Art, Art Theory:
Opening Speeches of the four International Video Exhibition Series
"So Close/So Far" - Hypercultural Passengers, Veddel Hamburg,
in the context of the Hamburger Kultursommer 2021 – with twenty-eight artists.

I: Marginalized, Invisible or Non-Intelligible

II: On Interspecies Relationships, Post-Humanism, Sensus Communis, Communicative Aggregate States and the Natural Beauty

III: On dummies of freedom, the logic of the gaze, cruelty and beauty, artists' myths, and activism

IV: Nature-Madness, Metaphysical Microorganisms, Private Property and Ask-the-Forest, "Trauma Entertainment," Accessibility.

 

Most recent philosophy article in English:

Vague Certainty, Violent Derealization, Imaginary Doubting. Reflections on Common Sense and Critique in Peirce and Butler
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XII-2 | 2020, Online since 14 December 2020.

 

INTERNATIONAL ART PROJECT:

Hypercultural Passengers – International Art and Philosophy Project. Instead of the myth of the autonomous, self-sufficient identarian subject the project examines and promotes the idea of the subject as passenger. With: International artist exchances, philosophical talks and discussions, conference.

With Ariel Flórez: Syncopated Resistance: Rhythms of Post-Colonial Thinking

 

ON DOUBTING:

The Beauty of Doubting (Political Reflections on a Rebellious Feeling) – better Layout! in: 
Between the Ticks of the Watch,eds. Solveig Øvstebo, Karsten Lund, Chicago: The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, pp. 153-183.

The Beauty of Doubting (Political Reflections on a Rebellious Feeling), in: 
Between the Ticks of the Watch,eds. Solveig Øvstebo, Karsten Lund, Chicago: The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, pp. 153-183.

Critical Common Sense, Exemplary Doubting, and Reflective Judgment, in: Ramón del Castillo, Ángel M. Faerna, Larry A. Hickman (eds.), Confines of Democracy: Essays on the Philosophy of Richard Bernstein, New York 2015. Reply by Bernstein

The Eros of Doubting, in: Women in Philosophical Counseling, Luisa de Paula (eds.), Lexington Books, Lanham Maryland 2015.

Enjoying the Doubtful. On Transformative Suspensions in Pragmatist Aesthetics,“ in: European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, Volume 4, Number 1, 2012.