Artful Objects by Graham Harman

Artful Objects by Graham Harman

Can objects be traumatized? How does the commercial value of an art object relate to its aesthetic qualities? How do objects interact? These are some of the questions addressed by Graham Harman, the originator of object-oriented philosophy and a central figure of the Speculative Realism school of thought in contemporary philosophy. This book includes Graham Harman's lecture "What Is an Object?" delivered at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, on the occasion of the exhibition "Sculpture after Sculpture," with Jeff Koons, Charles Ray, and Katharina Fritsch-artists, who have expanded the notion of the object in art and society at large.

In his lecture, Harman gives a thorough exposition of the object from an ontological standpoint and puts forward a concept of the object that goes beyond reductionist orientations. He declares a philosophical approach bringing philosophy and the arts closely together, where objects are impenetrable to direct knowledge and paraphrase and instead must be approached obliquely and indirectly. The publication also includes a symposium in which thirteen questions to Graham Harman-among and in relation to the thirteen sculptures of the show-that were posed about the implications of object oriented philosophy for art, business administration, and philosophy.

Contributors

Graham Harman, Daniel Birnbaum, Lars Stranneg rd, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, Marcia Cavalcante, Jo Widoff, Sigrid Sandstr m, Michael Dahlen, Emma Stenstr m, Jenny Lanz, Ebba Sj gren, Isak Nilson, Erik Wikberg

Copublished with the Stockholm School of Economics

Graham Harman is an Associate Provost for Research Administration and a Philosophy Professor at Cairo's American University. He was born in 1968 in Iowa City, Iowa, to hippie parents who met at a Rolling Stones concert in Chicago and had three boys. He earned his bachelor's degree from St. John's University's classical liberal arts department. Annapolis, MD: St. John's College, 1990. His Master's Degree was centered on Levinas and completed at Penn State in 1991 under the supervision of renowned philosopher Alphonso Lingis.

He finished his Ph.D. With a dissertation that became his first book, he graduated from DePaul University in Chicago in 1999. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as a Chicago sportswriter while completing his PhD studies. He started working at the American University of Cairo's Department of Philosophy in September 2000.

Egypt has become his home base, allowing him to travel to over 60 countries and write ten novels in less than a decade. He adores animals and became a vegetarian at the age of seven for ethical reasons.