Moderated by: Vitus Weh
A dilettante does not carry out an activity professionally, but for its own sake, out of interest, pleasure, or passion. He is a “lover of the arts, who does not just want to observe and enjoy but also wants to take part in practising them”, according to Goethe and Schiller in their 1799 fragment On Dilettantism. This is an amateur or a layperson who, however, is suspected to lack any true expertise. Today the ambivalent figure of the dilettante seems to have become omnipresent. The boundaries between the professional and the layperson are increasingly blurred, and not just in the field of art. In what sense, then, is it meaningful to speak of dilettantism? Juliane Rebentisch discusses with Vanessa Joan Müller on dilettantism.
Juliane Rebentisch (*1970) is a professor of philosophy and aesthetics at Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. She lives and works in Berlin. In 2012 her habilitation Die Kunst der Freiheit was published.
Vitus H. Weh (*1965) has been the artistic director at quartier21 since 2002. He lives and works in Vienna. He founded the magazine springerin. Hefte für Gegenwartskunst.