Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline

Ukraine: past, present, future

The book «Ukraine: Past, Present, Future» is for people who want to know everything about Ukraine. There are 7 chapters in the textbook: Geographical position (geography, climate & population), Political system (executive, legislature, judiciary, economy), History of Ukraine (Kievan Rus, struggling for independence, independence), Religion (church, festivals & rites, celebrated families of Ukraine), Education & science, Cultural life in Ukraine (literature, music, theatre, cinema, painting), Sport life (Ukrainian famous sportsmen, youth organizations in Ukraine). The book is the first attempt to summarize the information on Ukraine. There are texts devoted to wide range of issues about Ukraine, the past and present situations in the state and its perspectives in the future. Variety of topics will force the improvement of English language and wide the range of interests and mental outlook of people – what is very important nowadays

ھم گنہاگار عورتیں (We Sinful Women) Urban Feminist Visuality in Contemporary Art and Feminist Movements in Pakistan After 9/11

Abstract ھم گنہاگار عورتیں (We Sinful Women): Urban Feminist Visuality in Contemporary Art and Feminist Movements in Pakistan After 9/11 Kanwal Syed, PhD Concordia University, 2022 This dissertation provides a chronology of the circumstances that led to opposing but symbiotic representations of Pakistani urban gendered bodies as a site of contestation between imperialist and religious-nationalist patriarchies. It uses the War on Terror as a historical context to foreground a body of representative artworks by eight women artists that destabilize the oppressed-versus-pious rhetorical binary and tie the iconography of these artworks to diverse visual and popular cultures. It argues that these artists create “urban gendered subjectivities” through hybrid and rhizomatic ethnic pop-cultural material and symbolic signifiers; they do so not for a regional, religious, or nationalist identity but as a strategic feminist visual resistance against multiple patriarchies. The attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, followed by the Global War on Terror waged in Afghanistan, and the peripheries of Pakistan, had a massive impact on the region’s gender politics. For political gain, neocolonial imperialism and regional religious patriarchies exploited the rhetoric of a homogenized gendered Muslim body by substantiating it through their respective singular lens: religiously oppressed or religiously pious and empowered in their subjugation. This gendered binary politics strengthened and reinforced existing patriarchal structures and further demonized urban women who stood up for their right to exist in a mutually conducive urban society. Using cultural theory, art-historical scholarship, and gender studies through an emphatic postcolonial and non-Western feminist lens, this dissertation envisions an alternative art history by tracing feminist insurgency within urban Pakistan’s visual discourse at its primordial stages. Explicitly negating dichotomies, this dissertation gives credence to cultural, historical, and even individual complexities to gender representations of urban Pakistani women. This dissertation aspires to unpack artworks that entail histories of ancestral wisdom, migratory anxieties, intergenerational feminist struggles, defiant ideologies, and colonial residues. The research warrants academic peripheral-gendered space within art historical authorship transnationally and domestically, much like the female artists under consideration, iv who strive to create a nuanced gendered visuality by challenging and destabilizing monolithic representations. For productive and ethical ways of gendered visual representations and knowledge sharing, this dissertation proposes that it is time that Pakistan is seen through the eyes of its alleged “sinful women.