EMERGE Symposium 2023

BU research, Events

Affect in Theory and Practice – Beyond the Threshold of Language

 Affect theory| Affective technologies | Missing half-second | Intensive Time |

 June 7th 2023, Poole Gateway Building

The 2023 EMERGE Symposium will explore the significance of the concept of affect for practice-based media research. The philosopher Brian Massumi identified affect through what he called the “the missing half-second” an elusive pre-interpretive moment where we register raw experience before it is converted into language, verbal or visual. The force of affect is felt deeply but resists codification. Its societal presence and urgency is frequently articulated through an increasing emphasis on ‘lived experience’ as an embodied form of knowing capable of challenging the traditional hierarchies of power and knowledge.

The symposium will be a timely opportunity for EMERGE researchers to address the affective turn in ways that connect our individual practice to the wider culture, sharing our work, ideas, and assumptions in the context of a deep dive into the dynamics of affect facilitated by the work of our key-note speaker, the Dutch media theorist Eric Kluitenberg.

The keynote address will be followed by EMERGE members and affiliates presenting examples of practice that resonate with the theme in ways that will open up discussion for the afternoon session.

During the afternoon EMERGE members, affiliates and invited guests to workshop the implications of the ideas presented in order to envision the next phase of EMERGE’s development.

Sessions in the agenda include:

  • 11:00-13.00: Works (Various venues in PGB) EMERGE & affiliate artist/composer/researchers with works by: Panos Amelidis, Liam Birtles, Maxine Gee , Brad Gyori, Trevor Hearing , Szilvia Ruszev, & Ambrose Seddon.
  • 13:00-13.30: Break
  • 13:30 – 15.00: Round Table: Workshopping ideas relating to affect
  • 15.30-16.30: Summarising:  Round up of scenarios and manifestos

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