The Foundation for the Philosophy of Creativity is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 William S. Minor Dissertation Fellowship.
Jordan Kokot is the William S. Minor Fellow for 2020. Residency is adjusted for the pandemic. Mr. Kokot is a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at Boston University who is presently writing his dissertation on the Phenomenology of Time Consciousness in Art and Aesthetic Experience. His dissertation focuses on the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the foundational relationship between aesthetic practices and the phenomenology of temporality. This account is motivated by Alva Noë’s understanding of art objects as “strange tools,” providing us with the opportunity to catch ourselves in the act of “bringing the world into focus” by pushing us to engage with “the ways our practices, techniques, and technologies organize us and…[allow us to] reorganize ourselves.” Merleau-Ponty says that time does not exist for someone but rather that “time is someone…the temporal dimensions…never do more than make explicit what was implied in each one and each expresses a single rupture or thrust that is subjectivity itself.” In creating and appreciating works of art, we are inevitably and foundationally engaged in the practice of bringing time into focus for ourselves while also rebuilding the structures of our lived temporalities. Jordan also works and teaches in the phenomenology, aesthetics, and ethics of technology, analyzing the deep connections between artificial intelligence and virtual reality. He is also a practicing artist and creative writer, presently focused on producing a curated multimodal volume called field|guide which is dedicated to exploring the poetics of silence. You can learn more about Jordan here.