Thinking through Affect
A two-day symposium on body, affect, emotion and moving images
Friday 8 – Saturday 9 September
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht
Lectures by Steven Shaviro /Anna Powell /Lesley Stern /Norman Bryson
/Barbara M. Kennedy /Tarja Laine /Tim Stüttgen /Monika Bakke /Erin
Manning /Maaike Bleeker
Website : http://affect.janvaneyck.nl
In Deleuze and Spinoza's view the body is not considered a substance
but a kinetic and dynamic thing that is organised by "a capacity for
affecting and being affected." Affect exists only as relation between
two bodies and transgresses the borders between self and other, between
subject and object. Affect takes place on an automatic level not
consciously registered unless it is actualized into feeling or emotion.
According to Brian Massumi affect operates on a 'superlinear' level
that is registered by the skin and the visceral senses as 'intensity,'
virtual and unqualified experience.
This symposium will closely draw on theories on visual media,
especially cinema and media studies, since technological media confront
us with forms of perception that are non-intentional and a-subjective,
not subdued to the laws of representation and meaning. They can create
a shortcut to sensual and bodily experiences and have the capacity to
intensify, alter or distort the affective dimensions of an image,
sound, voice, face or gesture. Since the meaning and intensity of an
image are not necessarily congruent with each other, affect can be and
is easily exploited for political or commercial use.
Apart from the philosophical and aesthetic discourse on affect and
embodiment, recent findings in empirical psychology and neurobiology
have shown that the effects of affect are real and point to an
intelligence of emotions, as well as an intelligence of the body; they
operate on a different level than that of the rational mind. How do
non-conscious automatic reactions affect and shape the viewer's
experience? How can we write and think about affect? Which concepts
from philosophy and art theory but also from science can be useful? And
how does this level of corporeal experience resonate with conscious
emotions and with processes of recognition and interpretation?
Keywords:
-affect, feeling, emotion
-viscerality, tactility, synaesthesia, proprioception
-the body-mind as movement, process, becoming
-duration, intuition, memory
-affective mimicry and feedback reactions
-emotional and tactile contagion
Day one
10:30
registration
11:00
introduction by Ils Huygens (Theory Department, Jan Van Eyck Academie)
11:30
Barbara M. Kennedy (Film Studies School, University of Staffordshire)
Thinking ontologies of the mind/body relational: fragile faces and
fugitive graces in the processuality of creativity and performativity
12:15
Monika Bakke (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan)
I'm too sad to tell you…the story of the Grizzly Man
13:00
Lunch break
14:00
Steven Shaviro (DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University,
Detroit)
Emotion Capture : Affect in Digital Film and Video
14:45
Maaike Bleeker (Theater Studies, Amsterdam University)
'Hit Me, if You Can'; Martin, Massumi and The Matrix
15:30
Break
16:00
Lesley Stern (Dept of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego)
Motility, transference and conversion: an exploration of cinematic
affect as exemplified in Black Narcissus
—————————————————————————————————————
Day two
11:00
Norman Bryson (Professor of Art History, University of California, San
Diego)
Affect, Sensation, Empiricism
11:45
Tarja Laine (Media and Culture Dept, University of Amsterdam)
Eija-Liisa Ahtila's affective images in The House
12:30
Lunch break
13:30
Tim Stüttgen (Theory Dept. Jan Van Eyck)
Bodies that shatter: watching porns with Williams, Deleuze and
Preciado. A reconsideration of Linda Williams´ term 'body-genre'
14:15
Anna Powell (Sr Lecturer in Film and English, Manchester Metropolitan
University)
Jack the Ripper's Bodies Without Organs: affect under the scalpel in
From Hell
15:00 break
15:15
Erin Manning (director of The Sense Lab, Concordia University, Montreal)
How Leni Riefenstahl moves through fascism: from biopolitics to biograms
Admission: free
Language: English
Organisation and info: Ils Huygens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Advance booking and online registration are recommended.
For info and bookings please contact Madeleine Bisscheroux
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+ 31 (0)43 350 37 29
Jan van Eyck Academie
Academieplein 1
6211 KM Maastricht
The Netherlands
www.janvaneyck.nl
http://affect.janvaneyck.nl
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