LifeArt
The stylization of life is now a common trend from stem-cell research to cosmetic surgery, and from life-coaches to the politics of bare life. Life today is becoming a material to be shaped or a code that we can rewrite and extend. In this presentation I will review new developments in media and culture that relates to life as material or as form. And focus on a few artists, such as Robert Irwin, Marina Abramovic, and Tino Sehgal, who expose our forms of life in experimental, sensual, and conversational ways. As a theoretical background I will review some contemporary possibilities for addressing the medium of life in Wittgenstein, Foucault and Agamben. And mention historical precedents and dangers in the attempt to shape life aesthetically in German Romanticism, The Total Work of Art, and Bauhaus.

Dr. Roy Brand is a Lecturer of Philosophy at the Graduate School of Bezalel Academy
of Art and Design, and the Director and Chief Curator of Yaffo 23/ Jerusalem, center for
contemporary art and culture. He is the editor and translator of Philosophy in a Time of
Terror: Dialogues with Habermas and Derrida, and editor and consultant curator of Bare
Life: Contemporary Art Reflecting on the State of Emergency. His book LoveKnowledge:
The Life of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida, was published in 2012 by Columbia
University Press; and he currently works on LifeArt: on the Stylization of Life in Culture
and Art.

Presentation by Sepide Rahaa. Subject:
A dream that came true
based on Zahhak from Shahname Ferdosi

at 6pm

Dog
performance by
Ahsan Masood

at 7pm

Struggling with the rhythm

Karaoke
by Giulia Palladini, Claudia Pagès and Nora Sternfeld

at 8pm