Cardiff School of Art & Design>Staff>Professor Clive Cazeaux

Professor Clive Cazeaux  BA MA PhD



Clive CazeauxProfessor of Aesthetics
e: ccazeaux@cardiffmet.ac.uk
t: +44 (0)29 2041 6680
w: artphilosophyjunction.wordpress.com/

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7495-0832




Specialist Subject Areas

• the philosophies of metaphor and artistic research
• continental aesthetics, especially Kant and phenomenology
• ecological aesthetics and listening as responses to dualistic subject–object thought

Qualifications

PhD in Philosophy, University of Wales
MA in Philosophy, University of Wales
BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of London, Goldsmiths' College

Biography

I studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths' College, University of London (1984-87), and it was the questions I encountered there concerning the nature of representation in drawing which led me to Philosophy. An MA in Philosophy at Cardiff University allowed me to locate these questions in Kant’s theory of knowledge (1989-90), and prepared the ground for my PhD study – at the Technische Universität, Berlin (1992), and at Cardiff University (1990-95) – on how recent theories of metaphor in art and science can be informed by Kantian philosophy.

In 1995 I was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, part of the University of Central England as it was then. I took up a Senior Lectureship in Aesthetics at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, one year later. From 2003 I was Programme Leader for BA Art and Philosophy, and from 2007 to 2016 I was Head of Research Degrees in Cardiff School of Art and Design. I became Professor of Aesthetics in 2012.

Current research

Much of my research is driven by an interest in metaphor or how one thing can be about something else, e.g. ‘architecture is frozen music’ (Schelling), ‘the insect voice of the clock’ (Orwell). Behind this is a fascination for how things are grouped together or classified as one kind of thing, and the consequences of this compartmentalization for knowledge and thinking. I am following a line of enquiry that locates metaphor within embodied, environmental being and asks what it is about such being that prompts one concept to reach out and connect with another. 

I am currently working on the significance of appearance, or becoming manifest to the senses, for philosophy. The consequences of Berkeley’s and Kant’s assertions that concepts require or entail sensory content, I think, have yet to be fully realized. This work will take the form of a series of articles and then a book.

I am also writing a book on the philosophy of audio drama, due for publication in 2023. Every art form – dance, film, literature, music, theatre and the visual arts – has philosophy books devoted to it, exploring the questions and possibilities that are raised by the form. Every art form, that is, except one: radio drama or audio drama.

My book will locate the nature and scope of audio drama within key concepts and debates from phenomenology, philosophical aesthetics, and the philosophies of technology and sound. It will also present audio drama as an art form that can be artistically inventive in ways that either match or exceed the dynamism claimed for other arts.


Principal Publications, Exhibitions and Awards

View Prof Cazeaux’ papers and publications on Cardiff Metropolitan University’s DSpace repository.

Articles and chapters

2022 Which ‘Martin Creed’? Or switching from insignificance to significance. In Aesthetics, Philosophy and Conceptual Art, eds. E. Schelleckens and D. Dal Sasso. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 133–50.

2021 Judging contemporary art with Kant. In Kantian Review 26(4), 635-652. Open access here.

2021 Image and indeterminacy in Heidegger's schematism. In Ergo 7, no. 35: 937–60. Open access here.

2019 Art, philosophy and the connectivity of concepts: Ricoeur and Deleuze and Guattari. In Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology 6:1, pp. 21–40.

2017 Aesthetics as ecology, or the question of form in eco-art. In Extending Ecocriticism: Crisis, Collaboration and Challenges in the Environmental Humanities, eds. P. Barry and W. Welstead. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 149-69.

2016 Epistemology and sensation. In Sage Encyclopaedia of Theory in Psychology, ed. H. Miller. Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 294-7.

2015 The aesthetics of the scientific image. Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, vol. 2.2, pp. 1-23.

2015 Insights from the metaphorical nature of making. Lo Sguardo, vol 17.1, pp. 373-91. Online.

2013 Leading Plato into the darkroom. In On Perfection: An Artists’ Symposium, ed. J. Longhurst. Bristol: Intellect, pp. 65-83.

2012 Sensation as participation in visual art. Aesthetic Pathways vol.2.2, pp. 2-30.

2012 Deconstructing and reconstructing artists with PhDs. In Beyond Deconstruction, ed. A. Martinengo. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 107-34.

2009 Locatedness and the objectivity of interpretation in practice-based research. Working Papers in Art and Design, vol. 5. Online.

2008 Inherently interdisciplinary: four perspectives on practice-based research. Journal of Visual Arts Practice, vol. 7, pp. 107-32.

Books

2017 Art, Research, Philosophy. Abingdon: Routledge.

2011 The Continental Aesthetics Reader. Abingdon: Routledge. Expanded, second edition.

2007 Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida. New York: Routledge.

2000 The Continental Aesthetics Reader. London: Routledge.

1992 Immanuel Kant: Critical Assessments, co-edited with Ruth Chadwick. London: Routledge.

Supervision of Doctoral Research (titles or broad areas of investigation)

I am interested in supervising doctoral research in the following areas:

· the philosophy of metaphor
· the philosophy of the senses
· ecological aesthetics, including alternatives to subject–object thinking
· art or design practice-based research that engages with philosophy
· art or design as philosophy
· the relationship between theory and practice in art or design
· the philosophy of writing, including art writing.