## INTRODUCTION

Rather than addressing an overall theme the present issue of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics - in a new design by Studio Claus Due presents independent articles of different scopes and perspectives.

It  opens  with  Nikos  Papastergiadis'  article  'The  Cultures  of the South as Cosmos,' which is an analysis of shifting forms of the Global South in contemporary art that oppose coercive forms of cultural exchange and the cultural homogenization occasioned by top down visions of socio-economic development. Interpenetrated by neoliberal and authoritarian regimes the Global South no longer constitutes  an  ideological  site  of  emancipatory  resistance  and exotic cultural difference, Papastergiadis argues. Instead - based on his analysis of contemporary art works and markedly picturing the world from the South - Papastergiadis outlines cartographies of a cosmopolitanism from below.

Moving from the Southern to  the  Northern  hemisphere,  and a different kind of world-picturing, the article ''Mother Nature's Exhibition':  On  the  Origins  of  the  Aesthetics  of  Contemporary Northern  Landscapes'  by  Zoltán  Somhegyi  is  an  art  historical investigation of Northern landscape representation from the 18th century to contemporary times. Based on a historical comparison of  the  aesthetic  appreciation  of  Mediterranean  and  Northern landscapes in relation to the categories of the beautiful and the sublime,  respectively,  Somhegyi  analyses  Northern  landscape representations by contemporary artists from the Nordic countries as means of self-interpretation.

The question of aesthetic appreciation is also central to María José Alcaraz León's article 'Is There Really a Puzzle over Negative Emotions  and  Aesthetic  Pleasure?'  Dealing  analytically  with the  paradox  of  negative  emotions  -  i.e.  that  some  works  of  art gain  their  aesthetic  value  by  provoking  a  feeling  of  distaste  or discomfort - and focusing on the tension between pleasure and displeasure in the appreciation of painful art, León aims to show that the latter need not give up on the idea that aesthetic value is ultimately grounded in an experience of pleasure.

León's treatment of aesthetic appreciation is followed by Noël Carroll's article ' Architecture, Art, and Moderate Moralism,' which is an analytic exploration of whether a moral defect in a work of architecture can ever also constitute an aesthetic or artistic defect. Drawing upon the so-called 'uptake argument' and adopting the viewpoint of what he calls 'a moderate moralist' Carroll argues against the view that sometimes a moral defect in an architectural work of art can also be an aesthetic or artistic defect.

With  Trine  Friis  Sørensen's  article  ' A  Precarious  Construct: The Commission as a Curatorial Mode of Inquiry' NJA widens its  scope  to  include  curating  and  'the  curatorial'  as  objects  of aesthetic  study.  With  reference  to  the  work  of  Jacques  Derrida, Michel  Foucault,  and  Bruno  Latour,  Sørensen  reflects  upon  the act of commissioning as a mode of inquiry in relation to a recent curatorial project in which she commissioned two artists to engage with the Danish Radio Archive.

The review section contains a longer review essay on Knut Ove Eliassen's Foucaults begreper by Mathias Hein Jessen and a review of Lars-Olof Åhlberg's Notions of the Aesthetic and of Aesthetics: Essays on Art, Aesthetics, and Culture by Arto Haapala.

On a final note I would like to express my gratitude to Thales publishing house in Stockholm and to Ulf Jacobsen in particular who has taken care of the production of the journal for the past twelve years,  with  unfailing  meticulousness  and  aesthetic  sensibility. It is greatly appreciated.

Jacob Lund