Open workshop 12-13 March in Stockholm, a cooperation between Södertörn University and Freie Universität Berlin.

From Kant to contemporary psychoanalysis, "schemas" posit a relation between concepts and experience, mental processes and the empirical world. Are schemas productive ideas of an in-between, or merely tools of adjustment? This workshop brings a variety of perspectives together.

In modern psychology, ”schema” is a concept used to describe mental processes of cognition. In philosophy, the notion brings us back to Kant’s ”schemata” which bridge between the concepts of pure intuition and the empirical world. In psychoanalysis, ”schemas” such as that of Freud’s notion of the dreamwork give shape to the infinite material of the unconscious. Whatever the definition, the notion has a direct bearing on modern aesthetics and its theorization.

This workshop has the intention of bringing various modes of formulating schemata relevant for aesthetic theory together, including contributions from the arts, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Rather than defining what schema is, the workshop has the intention of bringing perspectives on what it might be, illuminating presumptions of aesthetic theory that are not always made explicit.

Everybody welcome!