Staff Profile:

Name::

Dr Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield

Position / Job Title:

Reader in Theory and Philosophy of Art

Responsibilities:

• Director of Postgraduate Studies
• Convenor of Contextual Studies
• Liaison officer for joint-honours degrees (with Philosophy and Art History)
• Coordinator of 'Theory as Practice' research strand
• Joint organiser of The Theory Seminar (with Art History)
• Convenor of the Art Theory Reading Group

Areas of Interest:

• Theory and philosophy of art and film.
• The conjunctions and disjunctions between theory and practice, the resistance of art practice to ethics, art as a question; art and responsibility/irresponsibility; the materiality and affectivity of theory.
• My theoretical background is in post-phenomenological continental philosophy, especially the work of Heidegger and Derrida. Other authors of interest include Rancière, Nancy, Deleuze, Levinas, Nietzsche and Kant.

Research groups / Centres:

Publications:

Postgraduate Supervision:
I welcome enquiries from prospective postgraduate students wanting to work with art theory and continental philosophy of art, and from those wishing to develop innovative forms of PhD in art practice and theory and visual culture.I currently supervise theses in the areas of (theoretical) writing as practice, the philosophy of curating, and continental philosophy and art. I'm also interested in projects on the work of Beckett in relation to art and philosophy, utilising the University's Samuel Beckett Archive, the largest such resource n the world.

Recent lecture courses and seminars include:

• Politics, relational aesthetics, and art practice/Rancière, Bourriaud
• Force, materiality, creativity/Deleuze
• Sex, flesh, body/Klossowski
• The head the face/Bataille, Levinas, Deleuze, Agamben
• What is an image?/Greenberg, Barthes, Lyotard, de Duve
• Art after philosophy/Kosuth, Art-Language, Blanchot, Davidson, Rancière

Research Projects:

• Co-Investigator, 'Beckett and the Phenomenology of Doodles', funded by The Leverhulme Trust
• Co-Investigator, 'Derrida's La Carte Postale: a film' (pending)
  Principal Investigator, 'Theory as practice: the materiality and affectivity of theory' (in preparation)

Publications:
Books:
Cryptochromism, Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academie, 2007.
Derrida and the Visual [forthcoming]
Headlessness (with Marcus Steinweg and Thomas Hirschhorn) [forthcoming]

Recent and forthcoming book chapters and journal articles:
"The philosophy of art", in: Mullarkey, J. & Lord, B. (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy, London: Continuum, forthcoming 2009.

"The work of art", in: Davis, B. (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, Chesam: Acumen, forthcoming 2009.

'Funny heterogeneous'. In: It's Nice to be Nice, Try It, Korea: Caustic Window, 2008, pp 27-31.

"Between Heidegger and Deleuze there is never any difference", in: Raffoul, F. & Pettigrew, D. (eds.), French Receptions of Heidegger, Albany: SUNY Press, 2008, 151-65.

"Nowhere is aesthetics contra ethics: Rancière and Lyotard", Art&Research, 2 (1), 2008. www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n1/dronsfield.html

"An exchange…", with Jacques Ranciere and Steven Wright, Art&Research, 2 (1), 2008. www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n1/jrexchange.html

"The sublime… 'if there is such a thing'", in: Mircan, M. (ed), Sublime Objects, Paris and Bucharest: Institut Francais de Bucarest and Muzeul National da Arta Contemporana (MNAC), 2007, cover-31. [in Romanian, French and English]

"Derrida", in: Costello, D., & Vickery, J., (eds.), Key Contemporary Thinkers on Art, Oxford: Berg, 2007, 121-24.

"Art and a 'people to come': A note on Heidegger and Deleuze", in: McNeill, W. & Kirkland, S. (eds.), Proceedings of the 41st North America Heidegger Conference, De Paul University, Chicago, May 2007, 119-25.

"A face apart", in: Arhitext, anul XIV, nr. 04 (170), April 2007, 46-9. [in Romanian]

"Kopflos I Hirschhorns Klassrum" [Headless in Hirschhorn's classroom], in: Paletten, 4 (266), January 2007, 50-53. [in Swedish]

"The condition of film as philosophy: Or, How can a film ask a question?", in: Film and Philosophy, 10, 2006, 135-50.

"On the very idea of sustainable art", in: Praesens: Central European Contemporary Art Review, 1, 2006, 74-9.

Recent conference papers and talks:
"Architecture and politics at the foundation of foundation", Evicting the Ghost, London Festival of Architecture 2008, Romanian Cultural Institute, London, July 2008.

"What's the discipline? Theory and philosophy as art practice". State of Play: Arts Research Today, Graduate School of Creative Media, Dublin, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, May 2008.

"Very dark skies over social housing", Pallas Contemporary Projects gallery, Dublin, March 2008.

"Overwriting, underwriting: Derrida and the visual", Collegium Phaenomenologicum, Citta di Castello, Italy, July 2007.

"Notes on the photograph as truth and uncertainty", The Uncertainty of the Image, Camberwell College of Art, London, April, 2007.

"Art and Politics at the Foundation of Foundation", Regimes of Representation, Muzeul National da Arta Contemporana (MNAC), Bucharest, Romania, January 2007.

"Klossowski and Deleuze and the pantomime of the passional couple", annual conference of the International Association for Philosophy & Literature (IAPL), Layerings, Nicosia, Cyprus, June 2007.