Arno Böhler
Lecture
Saturday 14.12.2024/ 20.00 – 21.00

Therapeutical Aspects in Ancient Sacred Arts.
The Gnostic Heart
by Arno Böhler, Vienna

The vision of the gnostic heart (vijñāna-hṛda) is a recurring concept operative in ancient Indian-Philosophies. It is said that the Kavis, the spiritual poets were finding the truth of creation by virtue of their passionate research into their heart. Diving into the depth of the heart they finally witnessed the ascent of a life-force that allowed them to directly grasp the gnostic truth-of-being (satyam). A form of knowing, which goes hand in hand with a bodily felt intoxication that makes one think, but also feel that something is sound. It is this bodily-felt-sense that gave the ancients art a healing, that is, a sacred character? They had to convince one’s mind, but also one’s heart.

BIO
Arno Böhler is co-founder of the philosophy performance festival Philosophy On Stage and head of the residency program for arts-based philosophy and artistic research in South-India (baseCollective). Together with Susanne Valerie Granzer they have developed new cross-disciplinary strategies between philosophy and the arts to give back to philosophy its materiality, corporeality, sensibility and vulnerability. In this context Boehler was principal investigator of three additional research projects funded by the Austrian Science Funds (FWF): „Artist-Philosophers. Philosophy as Arts-Based Research” (AR 275-G21);“Generating Bodies” (TRP12-G21) and “Materiality and Temporality of Performative Speech-Acts” (P17600-G06).
Böhler was visiting research fellow at the University of Bangalore, the University of Heidelberg, New York University, University of Princeton and visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the University of Arts Bremen (HdK Bremen), the University of Vienna and Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin).