S.Bergmann Workshop – Human Encounters with the World

Workshop – Spring 2014, Sweden or Germany.
Organized by Sigurd Bergmann, prof. dr. theol. Department of Archaeology and Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Trondheim.

Six to eight philosophers, biologists, geographers, and theologians, will gather to discuss the human encounter with the world.  Exploring the creation of artifacts and works of meaning that re-imagine and re-interpret our sense of the world. Our perception of the world—our aesthetic engagement—provides the much-needed groundwork for understanding our physical, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual location. Insofar as perception is not mere reception, but equally an active engagement and possible transformation, we seek an aesth/ethics of nature and culture as an intertwining of both theory and practice.

Questions: How might the work of art facilitate our interpretation of the meaning of environments? If humans seek meaning, how do the arts provide a reflexive way of perceiving the meaning of the world? How can “the spiritual in art” invigorate our power to anticipate sustainable environments?