Definition of aesthetics

Aesthetics, or esthetics, is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art.

Dada aesthetic // Marcel Duchamp's Fountain 1917

Abduction // the alternative urban action

The Latin American anthropologist Jesús Barbero characterises new urban cultures and their use of knowledge as abduction, which denotes an alternative action.

Abduction, denotes the action of taking a lateral exit in a formal argument, rather than going forward to the conventional conclusion. Understood as such, abduction then, is a form of resistance to the hegemony. In its best- known contemporary use, related to stories of aliens, abduction denotes an irresistible attraction for something that is apparently aberrant.