Simon Morley on the sublime and altered states in contemporary art

Thursday 25th February, 2016

7.15, 3.26 Bancroft Building, QMUL, Mile End campis

In the contemporary world, where technology, spectacle, and excess seem to eclipse nature, the individual, and society, what might be the characteristics of a contemporary sublime? If there is any consensus, it is in the idea that the sublime represents a testing of limits to the point at which fixities begin to fragment. Artist and art historian Simon Morley will examine how contemporary artists and theorists explore ideas of the sublime, in relation to the unpresentable, transcendence, terror, nature, technology, the uncanny, and altered states. Providing a philosophical and cultural context for discourse around the sublime in recent art, he will survey the diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the term as it has evolved from the writings of Longinus, Burke, and Kant to present-day writers and artists like Anish Kapoor, Bill Viola and Ulafur Eliasson.

Simon Morley is an artist and Assistant Professor at Dankook University, South Korea, in the School of Fine Art. He is the author of The Sublime, Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art and coauthor of The Winchester Guide to Keywords and Concepts for International Students in Art, Media and Design. You can read the intro to his book The Sublime here:

This event is happening in room 3.26 of the Bancroft Building in the Mile End Road campus of Queen Mary University of London. The Bancroft building is number 31 on this map. The talk will begin at 7.15 and end at roughly 9, after which those who want to can head to a nearby pub for further discussion.