Lecture
PROF. DR. TESSA NINA ZAHNER, AS PART OF EMERGING ARTISTS 6
THURSDAY, 03. DECEMBER 2026, 7 PM
Location: Cinema at the Dortmunder U, Leonie-Reygers-Terrace
Supporting Program for Emerging Artists 6
Run time: October 24, 2026 to February 7, 2027
► 7 PM: LECTURE
► Speaker: PROF. DR. TESSA NINA ZAHNER, Professor of Sociology, Düsseldorf Art Academy
"Mood, Empathy, and the Return of Substantialism in Contemporary Art"
What happens when contemporary art is no longer understood, but primarily felt? This lecture takes the current trend toward "empathy" in contemporary art as its starting point and explores its social preconditions and consequences. It examines how an "empathic aesthetics of experience" has established itself in the art world since the 1970s and how closely this is connected to the worldview of New Materialism. This worldview prioritizes immediate, sensory experience over theory and meaning, thereby elevating it to the promise of authenticity. But what does this development mean for democratic societies? What happens when, under the guise of relationality, a new substantialism is actually being established?
Prof. Dr. Nina Tessa Zahner is Professor of Sociology at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. She studied sociology in Erlangen, Bamberg, and London and conducted research in Augsburg, Bamberg, New York, and Leipzig on the transformations of artistic fields. Her research focuses on sociological theory, the sociology of art, analyses of artistic infrastructures, and questions of art perception.
Emerging Artists Dortmund is a collaboration between the Dortmund Art Association and uzwei.
