Etho-Ästhetiken des Visuellen

The relationships between art, visuality, and ethics – and their ongoing historical transformations – are at the centre of the research group’s investigations. Against the backdrop of current socio-political questions on the power of images and modes of seeing, the team´s focus is on developing an “Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual” in a systematic and methodologically comprehensive manner. Subjects range from early-modern reflections on the emotionally charged, edifying, caring, and even moral function of images and aesthetic practices to dissident performative strategies of bodily resistance in the ‘public’ spaces of totalitarian regimes. A common thread linking these projects is the extent to which creative interventions, (art) objects, and the built environment play an essential role in fostering aesthetic awareness, and can contribute to the ethical and political constitution of the individual and society at large – both in a critical-transformative and a disciplining sense.

Over the past few years, the group has built on its research into the ethical and political dimensions of visual culture with deeper attention to the figure of the human: body images, behavioural and gender norms, individuality and community or collective, extending to contested notions such as Humanism. Particular focus has been placed on Central and Eastern Europe. In a series of reading groups, seminars, workshops and ongoing collaborative projects, the group brings a transhistorical and transdisciplinary perspective to the region’s political, philosophical, and artistic realities. This involves not only examining the various international networks, but also analysing the numerous connections between art, literature, and philosophy that have until now been mostly overlooked. The group thus explores how Eastern European aesthetic practices offer counter-modes to widely accepted concepts – such as seeing, action, and visibility – that are often presumed to be sufficient grounds for political intervention. The group’s research examines, among other questions, what it means to ‘act’ under repressive conditions and where ‘inaction’ may paradoxically serve as a form of resistance. It also interrogates concepts such as imagination, reality, and realism – typically understood as a genre or device that produces a ‘reality effect’. These concepts take on new inflections in contexts shaped by Socialist Realism, where reality itself often assumes a surreal or internally contradictory nature, particularly in relation to dissident and underground cultures that challenged official narratives. The group’s work foregrounds continuities and points of contact rather than differences and ruptures that have long structured Western art historiography and intellectual history on Eastern Europe. In doing so, it contributes to a methodological renewal in how the region’s aesthetic practices are theorised and understood, while also enlarging the canon.

More broadly, a central task in exploring the possibilities and limits of an ethics of vision – and in developing an “Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual” – is to shed light on the transitions between visibility and invisibility. This involves taking into account different ideologies and regimes of visibility, as it is precisely here that common perceptions, epistemic norms and political emotions are challenged and transformed. Amid shifting visual regimes, in collaboration with Rafael Uriarte, the group also reflects on the effects of AI-driven image manipulation and generation on contemporary aesthetical and ethical processes and judgements – thus bringing art history, philosophy, and computer sciences into a shared dialogue.