\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThere is no emphasis in stating that the wildfire-like \nspreading of the COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly changed every aspect of \nhuman social life as we know it. Habits, models of organization, \nsocio-political dynamics and economic assets are portrayed in all their \nfrailty within an ever-new shape of \u00abfear\u00bb, whose overcoming strategy \ntranslates into a call to safety and unity paradoxically demanding for \ndistance and separation.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in 2016, in Vol. 9(1), Aisthesis <\/em>focused\n on the \u201cAesthetics of streaming\u201d, unknowingly \u2013 yet not unconsciously \u2013\n anticipating one of the main topics at stake these days, that is distal\n interaction, transmission, fruition and creation. This aspect, \neminently brought to evidence in the context of pandemic contagion, \nleads to a reorganization of fundamental categories of the aesthetic \nexperience: contact, proximity and distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The present call for papers aims at gazing towards the \nhiatus between these new kinds of human interactions and the \nexpectations linked to communicative habits. Consequently, it aims at \ncatching the pandemic\u2019s implications on communication, modes of \nintellectual transmission, art, proxemics and circulation of ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main topics of interest would be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 The relationship between aesthetics and memetics: what \nimpact social restrictions have made with regard to viral circulation of\n ideas and feelings, what was predicted by the paradigms of evolutionary\n aesthetics and how could they hold convincingly through the aftermath. \nWhich consequences \u2013 if any \u2013 shall we expect about viral circulation \nboth assumed under its bio-pathological sense and as a paradigm of \ncultural transmission?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Implications on Alo\u00efs Riegl\u2019s distinction (made in his 1901\u2019s masterpiece Late Roman Art Industry) <\/em>between optic <\/em>and haptic<\/em>.\n Now that the tactile becomes optic, do we not see a reversal of the \nsituation predicted by Walter Benjamin with the interpenetration of \noptical and tactile in the era of technical reproducibility towards a \ndilation of the optical with regard to the tactile?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Aesthetics of proximity and distance: drawing from the \naforementioned \u00aboptic-haptic\u00bb couple, what should we legitimately expect\n from each path? Could our whole aesthetic experience be re-configured \naccording to a distal, disembodied approach?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Embodied cognition: is such paradigm as a whole about to\n encounter its ultimate benchmark? How would contemporary aesthetics \ntranslate within the framing of limitations of movement and physical \naggregation such as the quarantine measures imposed by national \ngovernments? Perhaps radical limitations to this model are up to come?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Having surely created new habits in everyday life, could\n it be said that the pandemic might have generated unedited practices in\n aesthetics too? And if so, how do they relate with the categories of \ndistance, proximity and contact?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Which kinds of art and artworks should we expect in such context?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Hito Steyerl\u2019s defense of the poor image <\/em>within \nwebcasts and in light of \u201clo-fi\u201d art: in 2009, the German artist Hito \nSteyerl claimed compressed, low-resolution and multi-reworked images \nshould be awarded their own status as pictorial means vindicating \naccessibility over quality. The downgrading of audio-visual resolution \nduring the pandemic has allowed a wider availability of data albeit \noften resulting in still images, pixelated screenshots, fractured \nspeeches and awkward backgrounds. Could this have given to the hidden \npath of \u201clo-fi\u201d art its ultimate spin in the direction of \u201ciconicity\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Furthermore, to what extent could it be said that the \nact of freezing otherwise fleeting and unnoticeable facial and gestural \nexpressions elevates such shots to the category of actual photography? \nWould this strengthen once more Walter Benjamin\u2019s views while also \nbecoming witness of truth in the displaying of moods often significantly\n different from those elicited in the real-time conversation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 About the recognition of new forms of artistic communication, entertainment and spectacularization (from theatres to home shows): for paradoxical as it might sound, could it be that the prohibitions of leaving home may have resulted in an opening of the interiors? How does the perception of the relationship between outside and inside change at the times of Corona Virus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n