Workshop : Aesthetics, Cognition & Environnement

Tuesday, 14th April, 2026 | 9:45 am-5:00 pm | Salle de réunion de l’Institut Jean Ncod

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Schedule

9.45-10:00
Introduction

10:00-11:00
Sandra Shapshay | City University of New York
"Picturesque Environmentalism : The Curious Case of the Landfill Park"

11.00-12.00
Enrico Terrone | University of Genova
"Sites and Types : The Cognitive and Environmental Dimensions of Architectural Ontology"

12.00 | Lunch

14.00-15:00
 Marta Benenti | University of Murcia, University of Bergamo
"Climate fiction, aesthetics, and environmental awareness"

15.00-16:00
 Lucas Battich | Institut Jean-Nicod
"Joint aesthetic attention"

16.00-17:00
Laurent Jaffro | University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
"Aesthetics of the Ridicule and the Contemptible"

17.00 | End of the workshop

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Abstracts

Sandra Shapshay | Picturesque Environmentalism : The Curious Case of the Landfill Park

Sublime-based environmentalism has garnered significant attention in recent years. Picturesque-based environmentalism less so. The overall aim of this paper is to investigate the promises and pitfalls of picturesque environmentalism today, by focusing on what I see as the vanguard of this aesthetics-infused environmentalist tradition, the landfill or “garbage” park. Focusing on a case study—Freshkills Park on Staten Island, NYC—this paper asks : Should we enjoy contemporary landfill parks as picturesque scenery ? And, if not, what should our aesthetic responses to landfill parks be ?

Enrico Terrone | Sites and Types : The Cognitive and Environmental Dimensions of Architectural Ontology

Buildings seem like concrete particulars to be perceived in an environment, yet architectural practice is plan-centered and thus type-like, calling for cognitive uptake as well. To reconcile these intuitions, I cast architectural works as constrained types whose admissible tokens are limited by site and contextual conditions. Architectural tokens are not only intentional realizations such as construction, reconstruction, and restoration, but also temporally bounded stages produced by nonintentional processes such as weathering, decay, or disaster. Treating stages as tokens reveals architecture as the art of producing types whose tokens are generated not only by human intentions but also by the forces of nature and history. The result is an account that connects the ontology of architecture with its distinctive mode of appreciation : architecture is cognitively grasped as a type, yet environmentally encountered through its concrete, historically evolving stages.

Marta Benenti | Climate fiction, aesthetics, and environmental awareness

In the last three decades, the narrative genre of climate fiction (cli-fi) has grown exponentially and attracted increasing scholarly interest, largely due to its engagement with urgent contemporary issues, including life in the Anthropocene, societal responses to ecological crises, and ethical obligations to future generations. In this paper, I examine whether and how climate fiction can prompt virtuous behaviours toward the environment. After introducing the genre, I outline its defining (standard) features and elaborate on how they make these narratives suitable for fostering climate awareness and attitudes of care. In the final section, I analyse the role of aesthetic experience of narratives about nature in affecting our environmental worldview.

Lucas Battich | Joint aesthetic attention

We experience and appreciate together with others the beauty of a sunset or an artwork, the sadness of a musical piece. Admiring the same aesthetic properties of objects together with others is a ubiquitous human activity. At the same time, it is commonly held that aesthetic properties constitutively depend on a subjective response. This brings up a particular challenge : How can we jointly focus towards the same aesthetic property when it is itself dependent on our separate responses ? In this paper, I provide an analysis of joint aesthetic attention and explain how we can engage in it. I propose a multiple coordinative profile : co-attenders coordinate their perceptual attention to the object, but also the specific way they attend to it, and their specific responsive profiles. I advance a probabilistic account of how this multiple coordination is possible.

Laurent Jaffro | Aesthetics of the Ridicule and the Contemptible

Let us assume that contempt and ridicule are correct responses to certain traits in a person or behaviour, rendering them ‘contemptible’ or ‘ridiculous’. Which traits can make a person or behaviour appear contemptible or ridiculous ? What traits are common to these two values, and what distinguishes them ? This talk draws attention to the aesthetic characteristics that must be present for an object to be considered either ridiculous or contemptible.