If material is understood as an aesthetic category, it designates the material which is subject to aesthetic transformation. The category of material determines what works of art are made of. Since modernism, however, the question of what is suitable as artistic material and what qualifies it as such has itself become the subject of negotiation in artistic activity. Art no longer moves within predetermined and traditional forms and materials, genres and rules, but constantly negotiates its own framework anew in self-critical gestures. In this respect, the uncertainty about the material of art was not only perceived as a moment of crisis, but also as a possibility of a critical turn, towards an aesthetics that essentially no longer refers to beauty, but to truth. Almost all of Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic writings bear witness to the fact that this question of the truth of works of art is of central importance for his materialist aesthetics.

Following Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, the conference is dedicated to the constellation of the concepts of material and truth in the aesthetic field. The focus will be on the following questions: What and how does artistic material qualify as such in the first place? How does artistic material relate to artistic activity? How can Adorno’s concept of the truth content of a work of art be defined more precisely? What does the non-discursive, non-apophantic character of such truth mean? By what means does philosophical reflection and criticism gain the truth content of works? And what is the relationship between the material and the truth of a work of art?