Research Catalogue

Based on the Jungian concept of the shadow, I wanted to develop illustrations that depict a journey within the self, leading to the discovery and understanding of one’s own shadow. It represents the dark side of our personality, which we refuse to acknowledge and accept.

When preparing for the dead, may we peep into the future? In the broader geography of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, we cook our coffee in the briki or cezve. Every region has its own variation, some heat up the water before adding the powder, some add spices, some make it thick, others thinner. And every person has their own variation as well. Coffee is something as personal as communal. Apart from the daily morning and evening consumption, we also share two uses of the coffee that are central of interest here: the coffee cup reading and the tradition of coffee drinking in funerals and memorials. Imagination and memory, future and past, the association with grief; and the unique timelines traced in each cup. I think that it has been with me for years, the memory of my grandmothers, my mother’s morning ritual of cooking a light Greek coffee in a big cup. The familiarity of the Kafenio. And most importantly, community dynamics; sharing others, participating. Here I aspired to create a meeting space with people, artists or not, with whom I have met over the years and share the subtle fascination about this type of coffee and its rituals. Acknowledging the blood, oppression and displacement behind and around the product. The Cafe Imperial.

Although it is virtually impossible to formalize what ‘best practice’ on the Research Catalogue might be, it harbours by now numerous examples of expositions that ‘work.’ In this session, I want to introduce a small set of diverse expositions from JAR as a way to highlight successful choices people have taken. With a short explanation of expositionality and virtual witnessing, I aim to support an understanding of the effect that those examples have as a way of describing how media-rich articulations can productively engage with both academic and artistic expectations.

This essay establishes Post‑Interpretive Criticism as a formal break with the dominant aesthetic consensus of the late twentieth century, which treated meaning as something produced through mediation rather than encountered through structure. Surveying post‑1950 traditions across structuralism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, critical theory, and post‑structuralism, the essay identifies a shared assumption underlying their disagreements: interpretation functions as the necessary and ethically justified ground of meaning. Post‑Interpretive Criticism rejects this premise not by proposing an alternative theory of meaning‑production, but by questioning whether production itself is the correct frame. The essay argues that interpretation is not neutral, inevitable, or inherently liberatory, but structurally hazardous. Language, when introduced prematurely or excessively, alters the proportions of the aesthetic encounter, collapsing interval, crowding distance, and displacing presence with discourse. Meaning, on this account, does not originate in interpretation but in a relational field between work and witness that possesses structure prior to mediation. Interpretation is therefore recast as an intervention rather than a foundation—one that must justify itself ethically by preserving proportion rather than overwhelming it. Positioning Post‑Interpretive Criticism against the historical conditions that necessitated interpretive excess in the post‑war period, the essay argues that contemporary aesthetics now faces the inverse problem: interpretive saturation. Where interpretation once functioned as moral responsibility, it now frequently preempts encounter, substituting commentary for perception. Drawing careful distinctions from phenomenological aesthetics, the essay emphasizes that description of experience is insufficient without a discipline governing speech. Post‑Interpretive Criticism introduces restraint as method, silence as ethical posture, and proportion as evaluative criterion. The essay concludes by outlining the institutional, pedagogical, and critical consequences of adopting Post‑Interpretive Criticism, including reduced interpretive authority, contraction of discourse, and the re‑training of attention prior to articulation. It does not argue for universal application, but claims necessity under specific contemporary conditions. Interpretation, once required, is now placed at risk—not because meaning has vanished, but because the encounter has returned as the primary site of aesthetic responsibility. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843), The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881) Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen.

From the Gezi Park protests of 2013 onwards, Turkey has witnessed a troubling trajectory that reflects signs of an authoritarian dystopia —a word that might resonate with scholars of philosophy. This article interprets the variables of this authoritarianism, raising a question of law and exception on a local-global span. The modern panorama of Turkey presents an urgent case study for scholars examining the interplay between state power, civil liberties, and the public sphere.

This essay situates Post-Interpretive Criticism within the philosophical lineage of Pythagorean thought, arguing that both traditions uphold alignment, not interpretation, as the rightful posture toward truth. Drawing from the procedural structure of the seven liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium), the essay proposes a framework wherein aesthetic experience is not produced by commentary but preserved through restraint, ratio, and spatial ethics. The critic, like the Pythagorean listener, is not a performer of insight but a tuning instrument for fidelity. Geometry here is not symbolic but disciplinary. Harmony is not decoration but evidence of structural truth. Against the inflation of language in contemporary criticism, the essay defends the doctrine of restraint, articulated in the Post-Interpretive Lexicon as the ethical refusal to speak first, to dominate with explanation, or to distort the interval between viewer and work . By reanimating ancient principles of proportion, breath, and silent recognition, it positions criticism not as a pursuit of meaning but as a form of fidelity to what already holds its law. Using examples from art, music, architecture, and mathematics, the essay formalizes the alignment-based criteria for valid aesthetic response. These include grammatical clarity, logical coherence, rhetorical proportion, and quadrivial discipline, culminating in a methodologically grounded alternative to contemporary interpretive excess. Where most criticism seeks to explain the work, Post-Interpretive Criticism seeks to stand before it correctly. The work is not a message to decode, but a geometry to hold. The critic’s task is not verbal performance but spatial obedience. Truth, in this essay, is redefined not as insight delivered, but as harmony preserved. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843), The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881)