Goethe University
Campus Westend, I.G. Farben Gebäude
Norbert Wollheim-Platz 1
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Room: IG 311
Register via: info@aesthetics-of-democracy.de
All talks except for the roundtable “Praktische Perspektiven auf die Ästhetik der Demokratie” on Friday, June 5, 5pm-6.30pm will be in English.
In both public discourse and academic scholarship, democracy is typically understood as a form of government: a set of institutions and procedures through which political interests are formed, articulated, and represented. The Research Training Group “Aesthetics of Democracy,” by contrast, asks what it means to conceive of democracy not only as an institutional order but as a lived form of collective coexistence. This shift directs attention to modes of association that unfold below the level of the state and, in this sense, need not be confined to “actually existing democracies.” Such forms may emerge in art and culture, but also in clubs, associations, or fleeting encounters in public space.
The Opening Conference of the Research Training Group invites guests from Germany and abroad to give their perspective on the topic of the Research Training Group.
A full program, including abstracts can be found above.
Friday, June 5, 2026
3:00–3:15 p.m.
Ulrich Schielein (vice president, Goethe University) and Johannes Völz (spokesperson, RTG)
“Welcome Address”
3:15–4:45 p.m.
Jason Frank (Cornell University)
“Crowd Theory and Counterrevolution”
4:45–5:00 p.m.
Coffee break
5:00–6:30 p.m.
Panel discussion “Praktische Perspektiven auf die Ästhetik der Demokratie” (in German)
With Deborah Schnabel (Bildungsstätte Anne Frank), Franziska Nori (Kunstverein Frankfurt), and Jürgen Kaube (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Moderated by Johannes Völz and Sophie Loidolt (deputy spokesperson, RTG)
Saturday, June 6, 2026:
10:00–11:00 a.m.
Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha (ILSR Kolkata and Kazi Nazrul University)
“Transnational Aesthetics of Democracy: A Roundtable with Lalan Fakir, Rabindranath and Immanuel Kant”
11:00–11:15 a.m.
Coffee break
11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Francesca Raimondi (Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach)
“Art as Exercise? Practices in Contemporary Art and Radical Democracy”
12:15–1:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:30–2:45 p.m.
Till van Rahden (Université de Montréal)
“Democracy: A Fragile Way of Life”
response by Ajay Gudavarthy (Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi).
2:45–3:00 p.m.
Coffee break
3:00–4:00 p.m.
Patricia Hayes (University of the Western Cape)
“The Visibility of Partition and the Partition of Visibility”