8TH IISS

Rethinking Arts and Aesthetics in the Muslim World
Concepts, Theories, and Practices

8th International ILEM Summer School analysied Rethinking Arts and Aesthetics in the Muslim World Concepts, Theories, and Practices.

The biennial ILEM International Summer School aims to serve as a forum for discussion of major issues concerning the Islamic world by bringing together academics, researchers and artists from diverse backgrounds. The broader theme of the 8th edition of the summer school was Rethinking Art and Aesthetics in the Islamic World: Concepts, Theories and Practices.

The summer school examined Islamic arts, which are usually analyzed in relation to the concepts of “tradition” or “mystical experience” in contemporary intellectual and artistic circles, from theoretical, conceptual and socio-political perspectives and discussed the “axial shifts” or even the absence of axes that can be observed on both ontological and epistemological levels. The aim here is to shed light on what is beyond conditional and prejudiced forms of artistic expression. This can be expressed as an attempt to examine the possibility of producing aesthetic formulas as a golden mean to save beauty from the vortex of the two extreme poles of “acculturation” and “cultural schizophrenia”.