Thinking through Affect
A two-day symposium on body, affect, emotion and moving images

Friday 8 - Saturday 9 September

Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht

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

Program:

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)
Back with an 808: affective expression in recent music videos

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: Ils Huygens
ilshuygensgmail.com

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

Jan van Eyck Academie
Academieplein 1
6211 KM Maastricht
The Netherlands
www.janvaneyck.nl