This panel investigates “gratuitousness” as a key term for thinking about contemporary culture and aesthetics. To call an artwork gratuitous is to protest against its supposedly needless excesses – yet how does this square with the needlessness that arguably defines the aesthetic realm in the first place? Is the concept of gratuitousness a product of economic austerity? How might a sense of gratuitousness be produced by diminished faculties of attention? Possible lines of inquiry include

• “Gratuitous” sex scenes and sex negativity
• The pornographic as defined by gratuitousness
• Gratuitousness and shock value in contemporary art
• Gratuitous humor
• Gratuitousness and affect
• Gratuitousness as a category of visuality
• Gratuitous violence and digital infrastructure
• Gratuitousness and censorship
• Gratuitousness and political persuasion/consciousness raising/indoctrination
• Methods of reading and identifying the gratuitous

Please send 250 word abstracts and a short bio to seresin@sas.upenn.edu by March 13.

 ASAP/15 will take place in New York City, October 17-19, 2024

 https://www.cvent.com/c/abstracts/ef2d8807-b608-4109-847a-9d3f868c690d