3rd International 
Care Ethics Research Consortium Conference



Care, Aesthetics, and Repair


What if, as James Thompson proposes in Care Aesthetics (2022), we recognized care and dependency work as forms of art, revealing the aesthetic dimensions within these practices? Feminist thinkers have long emphasized that caring involves bodywork—attending to others through listening, observing, feeling, perceiving, improvising, imagining, and other modes of relating. How can we approach embodied acts of care, or what Anna Tsing (2015, p. 17) refers to as “arts of noticing,” as processes of artistic creation? Conversely, what if artistic interactions were understood as works of care? Care is taken through art, by art, and with art. Can the act of making, the processes of art, be a form of care for and with the world?

Recent scholarship, including contributions by Merel Visse and Elena Cologni (2024), Yuriko Saito (2022), and Jacqueline Millner and Gretchen Coombs (2022), reflects the growing interest in the convergence of care, ethics, aesthetics, and everyday life. This conference invites an exploration of aesthetics as a modality of care, where “aesthetics” extends beyond art to encompass a broader range of perceptual and experiential practices. Derived from the Greek concept of aisthesis, aesthetics is fundamentally tied to perception and judgement, mirroring the way care is woven into the fabric of daily life. Just as care is not exclusive to healthcare professionals but is something all people engage in to shape their worlds, aesthetic experiences are not confined to lofty contemplative events—they occur in the small, everyday encounters that elevate ordinary life. But how do we capture these subtle experiences of perception and care, and what methodologies are best suited to explore them?

At the intersection of art, aesthetics, and care lies the potential for reimagining how we repair and sustain our world—or perhaps, rather than repair, envision alternative modes of care altogether. In a world grappling with political, ecological, and societal crises—exacerbated by racial capitalism, colonial legacies, deepening inequalities, and the constant upheavals of contemporary life—how might the creative and caring practices of artists, practitioners, care workers, scholars, activists, and others serve as critical acts of worldmaking? And how, in turn, can this inspire us to imagine and practice care ethics and care theory in new, transformative ways? To explore these questions is to consider care as an aesthetic force field, tracing lines of becoming that hold the potential to open pathways toward more just and sustainable futures—or, just as importantly, challenge us to confront the forces that foreclose them.

This conference brings together care ethicists and scholars; artists, designers, and makers;  artistic researchers; performers and philosophers; educators; policymakers; and others to explore a fundamental question: What does it mean to care? The on-site conference will  feature plenary lectures, performances, artworks, a special roundtable on care ethics and care aesthetics, as well as paper presentations and artistic contributions from more than 120 scholars and artists on the theme of “Care, Aesthetics, and Repair.” In addition to the on-site conference, two online days with presentations by more than one hundred additional scholars will be held across time zones worldwide on January 30-31, 2025.


References
Millner, J. & Coombs, G. (Eds) (2022). Care ethics and art. Routledge.
Thompson, J. (2022). Care aesthetics: For artful care and careful art. Routledge.
Saito, Y. (2022). Aesthetics of care: Practice in everyday life. Bloomsbury.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
Visse, M. & Cologni, E. (Eds) (2024). Art for the sake of care. Special issue of International Journal of Education & the Arts, 25(1).
http://www.ijea.org/v25si1/index.html.


Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
30-31 January 2025 (Zoom links to be published later)

OrganizerCare Ethics Research Consortium
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
Images homepage: Merel Visse, Christine Leroy

design website: Johanne de Heus and Marielle Schuurman