Visiting Artist & Lecture Series+: Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield – The Use and Abuse of Philosophy for Art

Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield is a Dobrovský Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, researching dissent under conditions of repression and in illiberal democracies, and what liberal democracy can learn from such dissent.

Right now also bringing to an end a more than ten-year art-philosophy research project The Swerve of Freedom After Spinoza, comprising 75 art works, including books, lectures, essays, performances, performative texts, etc. (See below for an essay discussing a 24-hour gallery reading of Spinoza.)

He was Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art Research, University of Southampton, and Reader in Theory and Philosophy of Art, University of Reading, and has held visiting positions at the Royal College of Art, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK) Switzerland, and A.Pass Institute of Art Research Brussels.

Recommendation to watch/read or visit before the visit:

Please try and view: ‘10 Engagements with Alain Badiou, On Love, From the Perspective of One Who Distrusts Him’, for Before the Name by Francesca Banchelli, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2016 (6 mins)

Please try and view: ‘the use and abuse of philosophy for art’, performative reading for When What How Art Research, AVU, 2 December 2022 (9 mins)

Please try and read (online): ‘What reading Spinoza’s Ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text’, Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 2021, Spinoza Special Issue

Please try and visit: Thinking through Images, GHMP Prague City Gallery

and/or: Elmgreen & Dragset: READ, Kunsthalle Prague