Maria Filomena Molder is not sure that the "hell of the new", about which Baudelaire instructed Benjamin, is an archaic version of so-called revolutionary art. In fact, in that expression, the word "new" calls for an opposite word, and only in relation to it can we understand which hell it is. That word is "old". We are therefore in the heart of a historical temporality. However, this pair of opposites is no longer part of anyone's existential vocabulary except as an antiquarian document. In any case, and whatever the consequences, in this conference Molder will persist with the question that gives it its title, in order to test her idea that the expression "revolutionary art" can serve various sociological, political and historical purposes, but does not touch the swarm of obscurities that works of art usually engender.

Maria Filomena Molder is Emeritus Professor of Aesthetics at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a member of the Institute of Philosophy of Language (IFILNOVA). She was a Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (1995 and 2011) and a member of the Scientific Council of the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris (2003-2009). He writes about problems of aesthetics, as problems of knowledge and language, for philosophy, literature and art magazines, and was awarded the Jacinto do Prado Coelho prize in 2021 for his essay O Absoluto que pertence à Terra (Edições do Saguão, 2020). His latest publications include Três Conferências I - Lança o teu Pão sobre as Águas (Três Conferências I - Cast your Bread over the Waters) (Edições do Saguão, 2021), Palavras Aladas. Conversations around Drawing with Cristina Robalo (Documenta, 2022). He was responsible for editing Fernando Gil. Paisagens dos Confins (Edições Vendaval, 2009), Morphology: Questions on Method and Language (Peter Lang, 2013) and issue 68 of the magazine "Rue Descartes", Philosopher au Portugal Aujourd'hui (2010).

Simultaneous translation PT/EN and EN/PT