The Centre for Theatre Studies welcomes Virgínia Kastrup and Luciana Caliman for a joint reflection on practices of cultivating group attention, with a focus on art and shared aesthetic experience.In a context marked by heightened individualism, digital isolation, and the fragility of communal bonds, this meeting proposes to explore ways of fostering a relational, embodied attention that is responsive to what is common. The discussion will draw from experiences developed in the Aesthetic Laboratory of Attention, which investigates ways of activating joint attention as both an aesthetic and political practice.The event will be guided by the ideas presented in the book Aesthetic Laboratory of Attention: Cultivating Joint Attention (Kastrup & Caliman, 2025), a development of their previous work, Attention in Inventive Cognition: Between Care and Control (2023). Building on these publications, the meeting proposes an expanded notion of attention, moving beyond the binary of attention/inattention to explore concepts such as concentration, focusing, self-attention, aesthetic experience, attentional, ecosystem, surveillance, distraction, disperson, suspension, immersion, modulation and contemplation.Support: This work is funded by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under UID/00279: Centre for Theatre Studies.

Organization: Maíra Santos, Gisela Dória & Gustavo Vicente


Date: 27/05/2025
Venue: Casa Mocambo – Rua do Casa Mocambo-Rua Vale de Santo António 122A, 1170-378 Lisboa