recent activities
Aftermath - Or E for Installation
(2025)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Design for interactive art installation with urban regeneration proposal, as well as video about environmentalism and our technologically mediated private and public lives; installation catalogue design with photography and textual collage, 2021-2023.
"There is a massive abundance of goods that end up in landfills. With such abundance of goods, no one should be deprived."
Visitors will have to leave an unwanted item of theirs and take another to collect the installation catalogue. The installation will be monitored for this purpose. Designed with Wi-Fi light technology for agility training, the interactive floor in the entrance will be controlled by the visitors through a tablet computer that will allow them to select the difficulty level.
The exposition offers a critical viewpoint to the contemporary gallery-mediated commercial environment by making reference to the non-monetary economies of artistic and cultural production.
Art "is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy". The enemy is whoever exploits their fellows out of egoism or personal interest (Pablo Picasso).
With summary and questions about David Murakami Wood's article "The Global Turn to Authoritarianism", 'Surveillance and Society', (15), 3/4, 2017: 357-370.
Capture images through the screen
(2025)
Nicholas Mazzilli
In this exposition I invite you to reflect on a part of my artistic research: the screen capture.
The aim is to reconsider this little-explored practice by artistically transforming original images through a double variations in post-production.
In this artistic research I also use experimental software and unconventional methods to carry out images from videogames.
At the same time these methods engage with the European regulations about copyright and American fair use policies. While the extraction of images from three-dimensional, copyright-protected spaces is often restricted, it can sometimes be permitted when used creatively.
O A S I S
(2025)
MARIA DARMOY
What is OASIS?
Does it have a spiritual dimension,or is it something temporal that is shaped by social relationships and achieved collectively?
It is about the collective, inclusion, a place of relaxation?
Does it have to be about proximity between people or a total isolation in a safe domestic environment and introspection?
What happens if, within our social fragility, we leave our personal oasis and enter the public realm, where we are exposed under the gaze of others? If we decide to carry with us , even if it means symbolically , our personal domestic objects that make us feel secure and present , as a shield against the uncertainty of the outside world?
Is this the answer?
recent publications
Five Principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism: A Study Guide
(2025)
Dorian Vale
This concise study guide introduces the foundational framework of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC)—a new aesthetic philosophy that centers presence, moral proximity, and restraint in the practice of art criticism. Developed by Dorian Vale, the guide breaks down PIC into five core principles:
Restraint over Interpretation
Witness over Commentary
Moral Proximity over Objectivity
Viewer as Evidence
Rejection of Performance
Each principle is accompanied by a brief case study, reflection exercise, and ethical commentary, making this guide suitable for students, educators, curators, and critics seeking to apply PIC in the field. Instead of decoding the artwork, this framework encourages a posture of reverent presence, allowing the artwork to retain its autonomy and moral gravity.
This resource is designed to be taught, discussed, and practiced. It supports classrooms, curatorial programs, writing workshops, and museum education—inviting a new generation of viewers to approach art with humility, silence, and philosophical depth.
Vale, Dorian. Five Principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism: A Study Guide. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17077734
This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)
Post-Interpretive Criticism, study guide, art education, critical theory, Dorian Vale, aesthetic philosophy, viewer as evidence, slow looking, ethical criticism, trauma in art, art pedagogy, witness-based art criticism, art classroom resource, art and ethics, moral proximity, presence over interpretation, contemporary criticism, museum education, poetic criticism, art curriculum
The Living Lexicon: Post-Interpretive Criticism – First Edition
(2025)
Dorian Vale
The Living Lexicon: Post-Interpretive Criticism – First Edition
By Dorian Vale
Museum of One | Written at the Threshold
The Living Lexicon is the official glossary of Post-Interpretive Criticism — a literary movement that displaces interpretation in favor of presence, restraint, and custodial witnessing. It is not written to standardize, but to protect. These entries are not mere definitions; they are ethical and poetic coordinates. From Threshold to Witness, from Stillmark to Felt Proof, the lexicon outlines the sacred vocabulary of a genre committed to reverence over reading, and presence over performance.
This document anchors the critic’s posture, language, and responsibility. It guides without fixing. It names without claiming. It orients those entering the terrain so they do not mistake silence for absence, or discipline for detachment. In a critical culture flooded with noise, The Living Lexicon restores the weight of words.
Vale, Dorian. The Living Lexicon: Post-Interpretive Criticism – First Edition. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17111649
Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN.
Post-Interpretive Criticism, Aesthetic Theory, Art Criticism, Philosophy of Art, Ethical Criticism, Literary Movements, Witnessing, Silence in Criticism, Contemporary Aesthetics, Poetic Philosophy, Witness, Threshold, Restraint, Stillmark, Hauntmark, Silence, Viewer-as-Evidence, Ethical Proximity, Custodianship
This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)
Absential Aesthetics Theory: On Ghosts, Absence, and the Afterlife of Art A Complete Theoretical Framework
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Absential Aesthetics Theory
On Ghosts, Absence, and the Afterlife of Art
A Complete Theoretical Framework by Dorian Vale
What happens to a work of art after it disappears — and why does it linger?
In this seminal treatise, Dorian Vale unveils the full theoretical scaffolding of Absential Aesthetics, a core pillar of the Post-Interpretive Movement. This framework reconceives absence not as a void to be filled, but as a residue that haunts, instructs, and remains.
Drawing from metaphysical inquiry, trauma studies, and post-structural aesthetics, Vale argues that absence is not the opposite of presence — it is a continuation of it. From lost artifacts and sealed objects to erased histories and unspeakable memories, this theory reframes absence as aesthetic substance. The missing becomes legible through its consequences, not its form.
Across three theoretical movements — Erasure, Afterlife, and Hauntmark — Vale introduces critical constructs such as The Aesthetic Ghost, Negative Presence, and Lingering Witness. These ideas challenge visual primacy, proposing that what art does after it vanishes may be more ethically potent than what it does when it is seen.
Absential Aesthetics Theory is not a speculative musing — it is a structured philosophy of art’s most elusive force: what remains after it is no longer there. A vital contribution to contemporary art theory, this treatise opens a door for curators, critics, and philosophers who seek to engage art not just through its objecthood, but through its departure.
Vale, Dorian. Absential Aesthetics Theory: On Ghosts, Absence, and the Afterlife of Art A Complete Theoretical Framework. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17052070
Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN.
This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)
Absential Aesthetics, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, theory of absence in art, aesthetic ghosts, art afterlife, disappearance in art, witness and erasure, trauma and aesthetics, art and memory, aesthetic haunting, art as residue, invisibility in art theory, negative presence, art criticism and absence, disappearance as ontology, art of the unseen, sacred erasure, ethics of loss in art, non-object based aesthetics, hauntmark theory, afterlife of the artwork