In a previous post, I shared the plans for a conference structured in a somewhat unusual way, the “Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics.” The idea was to, in a way, “flip the conference” to better take advantage of the kinds of informal conversations about the works presented that takes place during, say, coffee breaks.

Well, the conference took place last May, organized by Zoltán Somhegyi and Max Ryynänen . How did it go? In the following guest post, one of its organizers, Dr. Somhegyi, provides a report.

By the way, Somhegyi, who is currently associate professor at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, will be moving to the University of Szeged (Hungary), where he will be associate professor in the Department of Philosophy. He works in aesthetics and art history, focusing on the aesthetics of ruination and  environmental aesthetics.

[Mug design by Pete Mandik. Click image for details.]

Report on The First Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics
by Zoltán Somhegyi

Max Ryynänen and I came up with the idea of establishing a new form of academic meeting dedicated to aesthetics, broadly construed, in autumn 2023.

We realized that at many “traditional” conferences there are normally long passive periods: speakers read their 20-25 minute pre-written papers, and there are only about 20 minutes for questioning, which is not enough for more profound discussions. At the same time, very often the most inspiring discussions, as well as the most “memorable” times are the periods in-between, i.e. typically in the coffee breaks, when you can chat more about the papers just heard. The problem is that these breaks are not enough. This is what inspired us to invert the proportions. Of course, it does not mean that there is only coffee-sipping all day. While there are adjustments to the schedule to save time for more conversation, there is also the delegation of some conference activities to participants before the conference begins.

One thing is that ours is a “read ahead” conference: selected participants write their (almost) full papers, typically of 3,000-6,000 words, and they are pre-circulated among all the other participants. All participants need to read the papers in advance of the conference. It’s also a “comment ahead” conference, in that participants are expected to send their initial questions and remarks to the author and other participants. In this way, by the time participants actually, physically meet, they know each other’s papers and have already commented on them. Thus the 30 minutes given to each speaker is not needed anymore to simply “present” the paper, or initiate lines of questions, but to take part in a fertile conversation that has already gotten started by responding to pre-submitted comments and continuing the discussion from there.

The advantage is not only that we can have more interactive and deeper dialogues, but also that one can get significantly more comments: while in a normal conference, in the few minutes of Q&A you typically get a handful of questions, here you can get remarks, questions, recommendations etc. from practically all the participants of the meeting.

Apart from this novel format of the discussion sessions, we tried to present an alternative to classical academic events in other ways, too. The event was not organized in or through an academic institution: while we both work in higher education, we organized these meetings independently from our universities, and in other locations. Plus, we left more time for discussion besides the sessions too, adding cultural events, artist studio visits, small excursions, group meals, culinary sessions, and more—all of which aimed at providing time for participants to have more dialogue.

The First Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics was held May 2-5, 2024, in Velence, Hungary. The topic was “Trying Out New Paths in Aesthetics”. There were 16 participants from 3 continents and 11 countries (Brazil, Finland, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Slovakia, United Arab Emirates, USA).

The accompanying events of the conference included a concert by Marco Bianchi, a boat ride on Lake Velence to a restaurant famous for its fish dishes, a visit to the studio of award-winning multimedia artist Milorad Krstic, a walk and “ruin-pub” visit in Budapest, and a tea tasting ceremony with a tea sommelier. For environmental reasons, whenever possible, we walked or took public transit.

Participants were very happy with the conference and appreciated the novel format. After the event, some even called it the best conference experience in their career so far, of course, not only because of the accompanying events, but for the extent of input they received on their papers.

Ryynänen and I have also founded the Society of Dialogical Aesthetics (a non-profit scholarly association, registered in Finland) in 2024, that is the organising entity behind the meetings.

The next edition is planned 28-31 August, 2025 in Helsinki, Finland. Abstract submissions are open till 15 March, 2025. More details about it are here.