RMeS Seminar: “What, of Art, Belongs to the Present?”

When? February 2018, Exact dates see below
Time? See below
Where? Utrecht University / University of Amsterdam
For? PhD Candidates and RMa Students
Credits?  TBA
Convenor? Dr Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University/Hong Kong University)

THE COURSE IS FULLY BOOKED, please send an e-mail to rmes-fgw@uva.nl with your name, university and research school. We will put you on our waiting list.

In cooperation with Sonic Acts as part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

Together with literary theorist Timothy Morton, renown composer/performer Jennifer Walshe is working on a large-scale performance entitled Time: the Opera which will premiere in 2019. In this seminar, we will work closely together with both Walshe and Morton, exploring the key themes that matter to this project as they coincide with the urgencies of contemporary cultural theory (media studies, performance studies, sonic studies). This means we will not start with a notion of ‘time’, but rather with ‘resonance’, ‘matter-reality’, ‘the present versus the contemporary’ as well as ‘the actor’ (and her/his non-relation to the present). With the artist, we will engage in participatory research-creation meaning that we will read texts from Gilles Deleuze, Michel Serres, Brian Massumi, Isabelle Stengers and Timothy Morton and put these ideas to work in a series of events to take place at the Sonic Acts academy (Febuary, 2018).

During February, several small gettogethers will be arranged (sometimes with the artist or other guests) in which preliminary explorations will take place.

Preliminary programme:

Dr. Rick Dolphijn UU/HKU
Sonic Acts Academy

* This seminar is still being developed as the is to involve more artists (the structure (esp. the dates, the texts) will stay like this.

At the interstices of contemporary philosophy and contemporary art, we get together for a close reading seminar/experimental research lab that circles around conceptualisations of ‘time’in relation to what art can do. How can art intervene in the contemporary? What is the power of art in realizing a wholly other form of time? How is its resistance perpetual?

Feb 1. 10-13h. Utrecht University
Session 1: A Materialist Turn: Let the Earth Enter History

Feb 8. 10-13h. Utrecht University
Session 2: How Art Matters: the Seen and the Un(fore)seen

Feb 15. 10-13h. Utrecht University
Session 3: Eternal Objects…

Feb 23-25 Sonic Acts Academy Amsterdam (several locations)

• Feb 23 14-17 University of Amsterdam: Session 4: Time, the Opera. A workshop with Jennifer Walshe
• Feb 24-25 Sonic Acts Academy (Several Locations)
• Feb 25 Research Lab on Time: What, of Art, Belongs to the Present? (Location to be announced)