Haptic Arts and the Aesthetics of Touch
A lecture by philosopher Luca Marchetti

Friday 31 October 2025 at 6 PM
Center for Contemporary Arts Prague
Dukelských hrdinů 25, Prague 7 

The lecture offers a philosophical reflection on touch as a sense that has long been overlooked in aesthetics and the arts, yet is increasingly coming to the fore in contemporary installations and in museum practices aimed at greater inclusivity. The neglect of touch is reflected not only in the limited vocabulary available for describing tactile experiences, but also in the restricted understanding of how this sense can enrich aesthetic experience. 

Luca will first focus on the multimodal and phenomenologically rich character of tactile experience, emphasizing its cognitive, affective, hedonic, and aesthetic dimensions. He will then turn to the role of touch in everyday aesthetics and to the question of what we actually perceive and appreciate through touch. The lecture will culminate in a discussion of artworks in which touch is central, and in the proposal of the term “haptic arts” as a distinct category encompassing works that rely on cutaneous, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic experience for their realization and appreciation.

The lecture and the following discussion will be held in English. Admission is free.

Luca Marchetti is a postdoctoral researcher on Enrico Terrone’s ERC project ‘The Philosophy of Experiential Artifacts’ at the University of Genoa; his work in aesthetics and philosophy of mind focuses on tactile experience, virtual reality, pictorial perception, architectural experience, and the appreciation of non-human animals’ minds.” The talk “Haptic Arts and the Aesthetics of Touch” draws on joint work with his colleague, Camilla Palazzolo.

The lecture is held on the occasion of his participation as a jury member in the Virtual Reality competition at the 29th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. The lecture is hosted by CCA Prague and organized by Tereza Hadravová (Department of Aesthetics, Charles University) in collaboration with Are | are-events.org as part of the project Woods supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Special thanks to the Emblem Prague Hotel. 

Image: Eva Kmentová, Untitled (Hands on a Pillow), 1968. Courtesy of the Kmentová Zoubek Fund.