01/07/2026 09:00 - 12:20

HALL: Pola - A102

Chair: Palfrey B.

Contact: Palfrey B.

Today, religions are often aestheticized in ways that correlate strangely with the aestheticization of politics. Religion and politics, these oldest of all bedfellows, continue to invest in art as they assert themselves in the aesthetically appealing blend of virtual and analog social reality.
Religion and politics involve a vision of life (theoria) and a way of life shaped by it. Art has the power to offer appealing expressions of this ordered vision, translating "harsh reality" into forms that allow both the unspeakable and the outrageous find palpable reception. Religion and politics primarily serve as stabilizing factors; art throws necessary light on both their promises and their shortfalls. Therefore, religion and politics must never stray too far from this creative-critical fountainhead.
This is especially true of religion: even the simple word needs an adequate form to have a manifesting or pronouncing effect. At the same time, the experience of art can have a "revealing" character without presupposing "confessions." Thus, the panel invites participants to explore the creative tension between religion and art (with or without a critical sideways glance at politics), and the promises and challenges they offer present and future societies. Possible areas of interest include:
• challenges that AI technologies pose to authentic religious experience;
• art and religion's impact on national and international politics;
• the ways in which concepts like equality, justice, and community are impacted by the interactions between religion and art;
• how religious communities embrace new expressions of iconoclasm;
• how art can improve or deepen (religious) people's perception of reality (aesthesis);
• and the ways non-religious persons often rely on art to help them contemplate questions once thought to be the exclusive domain of religion and political philosophies.