i will be attending at the bartlett

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