Emotion - Projects

Positioning:

Emotions are always tied to knowledge, everyday life, practical actions and requirements. They are conceptually and abstractly based on notions such as practical effectiveness. From this point of view, emotions can be determined as behaviour patterns that are closely tied to the acquisition of communicative skills within a community, since expressions of emotion are determined by the expressiveness of a psyche as well as by regulating social frameworks. They can therefore also serve a strong aesthetic function.

Objective:

Using emotions as an interface between practices, institutional and social norms, human factors (body, psyche), media and artefacts within R-E-S; Based on this, the resulting reflections, representations and forms of communication of the material are researched.

Study materials:

All media formats

Aesthetic Emotion. Forms and Figurations at the Change of Media and Genres (1900-1930)

Susanne Knaller, Rita Rieger

This examination of aesthetic emotion models questions the relationship between depicted and receptive emotions as well as aesthetic strategies for the staging and generation of feelings and affects, taking into account the demands of the avant-garde, the new scientific discourses and media possibilities. It is hypothesised that aesthetic emotion can be understood as a media constellation (which also refers to the body) as well as a negotiation about the potential of media and art.

• Susanne Knaller/Rita Rieger (eds.): Ästhetische Emotion. Formen und Figurationen zur Zeit des Umbruchs der Medien und Gattungen (1900-1930). Heidelberg, Winter 2016.

• Susanne Knaller/Rita Rieger: "Ästhetische Emotion. Modelle und Paradigmen in Zeiten des Umbruchs der Künste und Wissenschaften. Eine Einleitung". In: Ästhetische Emotion. Formen und Figurationen zur Zeit des Umbruchs der Medien und Gattungen (1900-1930). Heidelberg, Winter 2016, 7-21.

Love. Poetologically and Culturally. Figurations in the Spanish Novel Around 1900

Doctoral publication/monograph

Rita Rieger

Based on literary criticism texts of major Spanish authors from Juan Valera to Azorín as well as concrete implementations of aesthetic premises in the novel, “Liebe. Poetologisch und kulturell.” shows the preferences and aversion of the topics love, writing and reading. Love concepts around 1900 reveal an expansion of the romantic paradigm of love and thus illustrate social and aesthetic change. Love figurations therefore encompass two things: on the one hand, the cause of literary innovations in novels from an aesthetic perspective, and socio-cultural codes as a historical representation on the other. The retrospective dependence of the respective spellings to different conceptions of reality makes it possible to show the interweaving of cultural and aesthetic discourses and their change as well as ultimately the resulting different spellings of realism and modernism.

• Rita Rieger: Liebe - poetologisch und kulturell. Figurationen im spanischen Roman um 1900. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2016.

Spectacle as Aesthetic Category: Theories and Practices

Rita Rieger, together with Elisabeth Fritz (Jena) and Simon Frisch (Weimar)

Practices and theories of the aesthetic concept of ‘spectacle’ range from antiquity to the present. Their aesthetic characteristics and political impacts are studied in art history, philosophy, film, literature, media, dance and theater studies. The volume proposes a descriptive approach to demonstrate the specific characteristics and theoretical dimensions as well as different historical types, media formats, and modes of functioning and evaluation of ‘spectacle’ and ‘spectacularity’. The aim is to mobilize these concepts as analytical tools for the formulation of interdisciplinary research questions with a focus on art theory, cultural studies and social policy.

• Interdisciplinary Conference (in cooperation with the Universities of Jena and Weimar): Spektakel als ästhetische Kategorie: Theorien und Praktiken, Jena/Weimar 19.-21.11.2015.
• Simon Frisch/Elisabeth Fritz/Rita Rieger (eds.): Spektakel als ästhetische Kategorie: Theorien und Praktiken, Paderborn, Fink 2018.