TIMOTHEUS VERMEULEN

is assistant professor in Cultural Theory at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he also directs the Centre for New Aesthetics. He is the founding editor of the academic arts and culture webzine Notes on Metamodernism and contributing editor to Feedback Blog, a new critical theory startup by Open Humanities Press. He has written on contemporary aesthetics, art, film and television for, amongst others, The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, Screen, Monu, Frieze, Texte Zur Kunst and various essay collections and catalogues. His latest book is Scenes from the Suburbs (EUP, 2014).

2 p.m.
Stringing Along – On Sculpture, Metamodernism, and String Theory, sort of
After years in which artists valued the art of deconstruction, a new generation of artists – necessitated by the ecological, geopolitical and financial crises, enabled by technological innovations and seemingly spurred on by a generational desire to create their own discourse – have recently taken upon themselves the task of reconstruction. In this talk I review a number of these reconstructive practices within the context of metamodernism through the lens of string theory – or at least a particular theory of strings.