[spectre] affect symposium

[mediastudies-fgw]

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
ilshuygens at gmail.com

Advance booking and online registration are recommended.
For info and bookings please contact Madeleine Bisscheroux
madeleine.bisscheroux at janvaneyck.nl
+ 31 (0)43 350 37 29

Jan van Eyck Academie
Academieplein 1
6211 KM Maastricht
The Netherlands

www.janvaneyck.nl

http://affect.janvaneyck.nl