Thoe Society of Dialogical Aesthetics (SoDA) is a non-profit scholarly Society with the aim of investigating aesthetics and the philosophy of art. SoDA aims to organize conferences, study trips, to take part in public discussions, and to publish books and other editions. Therefore, it wishes to enhance dialogue in and about aesthetics on all possible levels of society and intellectual/artistic culture.
One of the primary projects of SoDA however is the organisation of the series of the Coffee Break Conferences of Aesthetics. What is this exactly?
Do you remember that highly inspiring discussion you were having with a fellow speaker in one of the last conferences you participated in about his/her paper, when the organisers suddenly reminded you of the end of the coffee break, and you had to rush back to listen to the next speaker? Do you remember the exhausting days of the conference that are fully packed with presentations, with barely any time to have more leisurely chats with other participants (except if you skip an otherwise surely interesting talk, hence causing dilemmas and bad conscience...). Do you remember how refreshing it is when in a conference you have excursions, city visits, common dinners, hiking or even sauna sessions? And finally, do you remember how much we all missed, during Corona-times and amidst the zoom-conferences that we can finally meet in person again, and have thorough conversations not necessarily only about a paper, but on anything else, like in a good coffee break?
The Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics is a new platform targeting precisely this sort of experience. It is a scholarly meeting, in which the proportions of a traditional academic conference are inverted: while normally in conferences we have long lecture sessions of passive listening and short coffee breaks for some talk, this time the focus is on the discussions – both regarding each other’s academic research and beyond.
However, this inversion of the proportions does not jeopardize the scholarly nature of the meeting: The idea of the Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics is to first share texts on-line among the participants and (this is a must for all participants) to then comment on them BEFORE the meeting. In this way we “gain” a significant amount of time: in other words we do not spend most of the conference time by simply listening to a presentation for the first time and ask basic questions or express our first-impression-reactions, but we can use the time we will spend together to go deeper in the ideas, concepts and insights developed in the participants’ texts that by then we all already know. Besides that, we understand the papers better, as we read them, and we do not, so, have to work on straightening misunderstandings, which often is the case after 20 minute talks. Hence, during the actual meeting we can focus more on discussing the presented issues, as well as anything else that interests us.
To further emphasise the informal nature of the conference, there are no keynotes. Better to say: all participants are keynotes, and their research will equally be in the limelight, no matter how “famous” or “well-published” they are.
Most importantly, this conference aims for a laid-back, intelligent, but not “professionalist” atmosphere. We hope everyone brings in a good spirit and a thirst for substance-driven discussions! As we share our work already before “walking in”, there is time to go deep, often in untraditional setting and circumstances – why should sitting in a lecture room be the only way to discuss someone’s paper? Can it be in a garden, or while hiking, going to sauna, or taking the metro to go to visit an artist studio?
One of the primary projects of SoDA however is the organisation of the series of the Coffee Break Conferences of Aesthetics. What is this exactly?
Do you remember that highly inspiring discussion you were having with a fellow speaker in one of the last conferences you participated in about his/her paper, when the organisers suddenly reminded you of the end of the coffee break, and you had to rush back to listen to the next speaker? Do you remember the exhausting days of the conference that are fully packed with presentations, with barely any time to have more leisurely chats with other participants (except if you skip an otherwise surely interesting talk, hence causing dilemmas and bad conscience...). Do you remember how refreshing it is when in a conference you have excursions, city visits, common dinners, hiking or even sauna sessions? And finally, do you remember how much we all missed, during Corona-times and amidst the zoom-conferences that we can finally meet in person again, and have thorough conversations not necessarily only about a paper, but on anything else, like in a good coffee break?
The Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics is a new platform targeting precisely this sort of experience. It is a scholarly meeting, in which the proportions of a traditional academic conference are inverted: while normally in conferences we have long lecture sessions of passive listening and short coffee breaks for some talk, this time the focus is on the discussions – both regarding each other’s academic research and beyond.
However, this inversion of the proportions does not jeopardize the scholarly nature of the meeting: The idea of the Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics is to first share texts on-line among the participants and (this is a must for all participants) to then comment on them BEFORE the meeting. In this way we “gain” a significant amount of time: in other words we do not spend most of the conference time by simply listening to a presentation for the first time and ask basic questions or express our first-impression-reactions, but we can use the time we will spend together to go deeper in the ideas, concepts and insights developed in the participants’ texts that by then we all already know. Besides that, we understand the papers better, as we read them, and we do not, so, have to work on straightening misunderstandings, which often is the case after 20 minute talks. Hence, during the actual meeting we can focus more on discussing the presented issues, as well as anything else that interests us.
To further emphasise the informal nature of the conference, there are no keynotes. Better to say: all participants are keynotes, and their research will equally be in the limelight, no matter how “famous” or “well-published” they are.
Most importantly, this conference aims for a laid-back, intelligent, but not “professionalist” atmosphere. We hope everyone brings in a good spirit and a thirst for substance-driven discussions! As we share our work already before “walking in”, there is time to go deep, often in untraditional setting and circumstances – why should sitting in a lecture room be the only way to discuss someone’s paper? Can it be in a garden, or while hiking, going to sauna, or taking the metro to go to visit an artist studio?