THINKING ART AS A PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

Deleuze and Guattari famously claimed that art does not wait for the human being to begin. Art is then not to be considered a product of the human mind or as a creation of the human artist. Instead, it should be seen as a particular event in which the human being might play a role. The question to ask then is: in what way does art matter? Discussing contemporary experiments in performance art, installation art and bio art, the goal of this talk is twofold. First, we need to ask ourselves again what it is that art is reveiling. Second, we need to rethink the role of the human being in art.

Rick Dolphijn is a writer and a philosopher teaching at the Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University. He is interested in continental philosophy, art, technology and contemporary activism. He published in journals like Collapse, Deleuze Studies and Continental Philosophy Review. His books include New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (with Iris van der Tuin) and This Deleuzian Century: Art, Activism, Life (edited with Rosi Braidotti). He is finishing a new monograph entitled Surfaces: How Philosophy and Art Matter.