•  2
    Sherri Irvin, "Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art." (review)
    Philosophy in Review 43 (3): 20-22. 2023.
  •  17
    Performative Activism Redeemed
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (2): 164-172. 2023.
    Over the last century, performance art has troubled the worlds of art and of philosophical aesthetics, unleashing modes of creativity and criticality that spill outside the customary boundaries of either. One of these modes is that of political activism. Performance art is genetically related to activism due to the shared historical contexts their respective waves have emerged from and responded to. In my article, I make the claim that the relationship between performance art and activism also h…Read more
  •  1
    The Spectacle of Failure: Reading Beckett’s Endgame Philosophically
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 55 (2): 198. 2020.
  •  14
    The Philosophy of Curatorial Practice: Between Work and World (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (3): 274. 2022.
    Curating is a confounding concept—highly specialized in its technical meaning but wildly ecumenical in colloquial usage. This makes it a good candidate for philosophical attention. Considering how often the boundaries of curating have been redrawn since the 1960s, it is encouraging to see philosophers finally turning their lens on it in the last decade. This is also partly what makes Sue Spaid’s The philosophy of curatorial practice: between work and world a welcome contribution. The book might …Read more
  •  125
    Black Aesthetics: Reconstruction Through Resocialisation
    Debates in Aesthetics 15 (2): 97-110. 2020.
    My response to Paul C. Taylor’s “Black Reconstruction in Aesthetics” follows his example in engaging different disciplinary and thematic contexts. I start with an account of a scene in the 2018 movie Black Panther and explore its relevance to recent discussions about the restitution of African art objects. I then attend to some productive similarities between Taylor’s intervention into contemporary aesthetics and a prominent argument in favour of restitution. I finish by suggesting that the reco…Read more
  •  9
    "Isn't All Art Performed?" Issue Introduction
    with Sue Spaid
    Aesthetic Investigations 5 (1): 1-6. 2021.
    The work of artist Ron Athey has long befuddled the art historical establishment and has mostly remained under the philosophical radar. In this review of Athey’s Acephalous Monster, performed on August 28, 2021, at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in Los Angeles, I propose a philosophical frame- work for Athey’s radical reinvention of ethical categories like agency, mutuality and communion. I describe the performance and its critical context in order to tease out the aesthetic dimension o…Read more
  •  23
    The Spectacle of Failure: Reading Beckett’s Endgame Philosophically
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 55 (2): 198-217. 2018.
    The borderline between philosophy and literature is highly contested. Still, if literary theorists and philosophers agree on the occasional work’s ability to transcend border norms altogether, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is a piece of dramatic writing that amply deserves the distinction. My article attempts a symptomatic comparison between the existential condition of Endgame’s characters, on the one hand, and the philosophical predicament, on the other. The importance of failure – both as an obsta…Read more
  •  40
    One of Deleuze's Bergsonisms
    Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 5 (3): 340-357. 2011.
    In this article I attempt to reveal some continuities between the anti-psychoanalytic stance adopted by Gilles Deleuze in his later work and Henri Bergson's early philosophy. On account of these continuities I hope to provide a glimpse into what I believe is a century-old tangent of philosophical resistance to the methods and theories of Freudian psychoanalysis. In order to achieve this, I start with a brief meditation on the challenges and benefits of cross-generational inheritance and collabor…Read more
  •  35
    The Curator as Artist: Reply to Sue Spaid
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (1): 91-95. 2016.
  •  43
    Idle Arts: Reconsidering the Curator
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (1): 83-93. 2014.
    In this article, I propose a way for philosophical aesthetics to make sense of the curator's work and specifically its claim to creativity and value making. My thesis is that selecting art should be thought of as a fine art in itself. This thesis, in various formulations, has been a source of controversy for art historians, critics, and theorists for more than a century. Even though philosophers have barely addressed the issue, philosophical aesthetics has been complicit in the prevalent modes o…Read more