Angela Melitopoulos, Assemblages
Angela Melitopoulos' and Maurizio Lazzarato's
audio-visual research project and video installation Assemblages looks at Félix
Guattari revolutionary psychiatric practice, his political activism as well as
his ideas concerning ecosophy and his interest in animism especially in the
Brazilian and Japanese context. In Guattari's work and in the same manner as in
animist societies, subjectivity loses the transcendent and transcendental
status that characterizes the Western paradigm. Guattari’s thought and that of
animist societies can find common ground in this understanding of subjectivity.
Aspects of poly-semic, trans-individual, and animist subjectivity also
characterize the world of childhood, of psychosis, of amorous or political
passion, and of artistic creation. Assemblages montages excerpts of
documentaries, essay-films, radio interviews and sound archives with research
interviews (Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, anthropologist; Éric Alliez,
philosopher; Jean Claude Polack, psychiatrist; Jean Jacques Lebel, artist;
Barbara Glowczewski, anthropologist; Peter Pál Pelbart, philosopher; Janja
Rosangela Araujo, master of Capoeira Angola; Suely Rolnik psycho-therapist and
cultural critic) into a vertical three channel video installation. The lecture
focuses on the artistic concept of the installation and montage of these
materials with the aim to discuss a history of Guattari’s politics of
experimentation in that collective artistic practices became a laboratory for
political concepts. The video installation ‘Assemblages’ alludes itself to a
form of machinic animism that reflects the experimental methodologies in
artistic research. The current project of Melitopoulos/Lazzarato focuses on the
concept of the refrain and the war machine in anti-military protest movements
in South East Asia. In collaboration with filmmaker Angela Anderson and the
current anti-mining protest movements in Skouries, Melitopoulos relates the
concept of the refrain to the reality of an unearthing disaster.
Angela Melitopoulos is an artist in the time-based
arts based in Berlin. She studied fine Arts with Nam June Paik. She realizes
audio-visual research projects and shows multi-screen installations, archival
performances, expanded cinema formats, documentaries, still image displays and
sound pieces. Duration and micro-processes in mnemonic narratives inform her
essayistic concepts in documentation. Her work reveals a nomadological approach
that relates mobility to the production of subjectivity, the agency between
collective memory and the precept of geography. Since the 1990 ties she
collaborates with the sociologist and philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato. Her
videos were awarded and displayed in numerous international festivals,
exhibitions and museums (f.ex. Taipee Biennial, Generali Foundation Vienna,
Berlin Film Festival, Antonin Tapies Foundation Barcelona, KW Berlin, Manifesta
7, Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, Whitney Museum New York). She is teaching as
a professor in the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen
Xhercis Mendez, Battling Silent Chaos: The Refrain and
its Decolonial Potentials
There is a silent chaos that organizes the lives of
some people more than others. At different levels this silence of order, of
normalizing ways of occupying space performs a significant reduction in the
ways in which People of Color are “allowed” to inhabit “the World.” These
reductions form part of what I consider to be a silent chaos. It is silent
because of the silences around race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability,
and the intersections of and between them all. It is chaos because these
silences are intrinsic to the assault on bodies of Color. They form part of the
infinite layers of web that trap us at every turn. In this way, traveling into
the hegemonic “reality,” the only significant “World” of meaning for
Eurocentric thinkers, for folks of Color means occupying the space of disorder,
the space where bodies of Color have to be hyper-vigilant in order to dodge the
bullets and avoid the pitfalls associated with our own dehumanization. This
silent chaos orders, norms, envelopes, and imprisons our thoughts and our
bodies, as it delineates the rules on how we are to occupy space using
discipline and power. It is from experiencing as well as witnessing the battle
with this silent chaos that I attempt to explore the decolonial potentials of
Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Refrain.
Xmendez77@gmail.com
Ioulia Mermigka, Sci- Fi Cinema and the People to Come
In “What is Philosophy?” Deleuze and Guattari say that
philosophy works ‘to summon forth a new earth, a new people[..]. Art and
philosophy converge at this point: the constitution of an earth and a people
that are lacking as the correlate of creation’ . In the “Cinema II” Deleuze
says about political cinema:" it would be on this basis: the people no
longer exists, or not yet... the people are missing” . I will address, on the
one hand, the issue of a politics of cinema and film theory in contemporary commercial
American sci-fi production and how a militant-superheroic, ideological-paranoic
cinematic "empire" is expanding its post-media propaganda based still
on the notion of the people. On the other hand, I will more thoroughly discuss
Shane Carruth's “Upstream Color” (2013), considering it a work of minor cinema,
not only in terms of production and distribution. In its series of bodily
affects, chronosigns, lectosigns and noosings, as the form of content, I will
juxtapose, in the form of expression, its series of becomings: becoming-woman,
becoming-animal, becoming-sound, becoming-disobedient, becoming-music,
becoming-animal, so as to argue that the cry for the “people to come” is heard
only after the mourning of the breaking of the cycles of the aesthetics of the
common sense and “only as that people continues its becoming”.
Dr. Ioulia Mermigka is an Athenian-based independent
scholar, teaching Cultural Studies, Cinema and Philosophy in Lifelong Learning
programmes of the University of Athens and is a teaching fellow of the
Communication and Mass Media Studies Faculty of the University of Athens. She
also collaborates with the Greek Film Archive. iouliamermigka@gmail.com
Phoebe Moore, (co-author Andrew Robinson, Independent
Researcher) The Politics of Wearables: The Quantified Self at Work
The quantified self movement (QSM) is an emerging
trend identified by a range of technological devices used for self-tracking.
Such technologies can be used for first-person digital ethnographies,
lifelogging, and self-tracking of mental and physical activities as well as
recording surroundings and actions also seen in the police force (Atkinson,
2014) and professional sports (Wade, 2014). Emerging discussions in the QSM
neglect to identify the exploitative, political economy aspects of such
technologies, usually portraying them as improvements in self-knowledge and
happiness (see recent Goldsmiths/Rackspace report and Wilson, 2013b; Nield,
2014). QS technologies treat body and mind as interconnected and inseparable, challenging
the dualism of body and mind in practice even while affirming it in rhetoric.
However, they tend to unite body and mind under the sign of mind, as techniques
of managerial (mental) control, what Rose (2001) terms the 'politics of life
itself'. The difficulty, however, is that this politics does not speak to ‘life
itself’, any more than Fordism or medievalism. What it speaks to is a
particular quantitative, spatial representation of life. From a
Deleuzian-Bergsonian viewpoint, what is missing here is any awareness of the
dimension of life as such – the field of the temporal, of becoming and
differenciation, and of the unique experience of life – in Marxian terms, of
labour-power prior to its equivalential capture by capital.
Phoebe Moore is an active researcher and a Senior
Lecturer in International Relations at Middlesex University London. She is
currently writing about the quantified self at work and decent work as an
internationalising concept and has previously published on the dangers of the
revolving door in private and public in educative spheres from a neo-Gramscian
perspective and the control of the self in digital work and peer to peer
production. She has published a number of books, articles and reports about
labour struggle, industrial relations and the impact of technology on everyday
lives.
Pvm.doc#gmail.com
Konstantinos Moraitis, Design of earth movement:
Objects, buildings and environment conceived as landscape formations
Though primarily philosophical, Deleuzean theory is in
many ways relevant to cultural references of practical importance. We shall
discuss in particular its relation to a contemporary conception of Landscape,
which approaches earth surface as a morphogenetic environment under constant
transformation. Principally related to Baroque period, Deleuzean proposal on
“Fold”, “Le Pli”, finally refers to the contemporary interest in topological
geometry and moreover to the possibility of expressing this contemporary
topological ‘anxiety’ in design and constructional practices. Originally
initiated as a 17th century Leibnizian effort, topology was not largely
developed till the beginning of 20th century, while its application in urban
and landscape design occurred only recently, as a consequence of the
advancement of contemporary computational simulation techniques. Thus the
well-known Gilles Deleuze’s book on “Leibniz and the Baroque” seems to present
in detail the first pole of the growth of topological thinking; that of the
17th century. The second pole, the contemporary one could be presented by
Deleuze’s relation to Bernard Cache and through him to the maturation of the
computational design practices. What is certainly missing from the Deleuzean
project on fold is a detailed reference on geometrical “anamorphosis” as applied
in Baroque garden design. Through anamorphic treatment a hidden undulation of
earth surface was created, clearly related to landscape folding formations, as
conceived by contemporary architectural, urban and landscape design.
Doctoral Thesis under the subject: Landscape –
allocating place through Civilisation. Exposition and theoretical correlation
of the most significant modern approaches concerning landscape (School of
Architecture NTUA). Postgraduate Studies of Ethical and Political Philosophy,
Seminar of Aesthetic Philosophy (Université I de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne,
1980-1981). Postgraduate Program of Arabic and Islamic Studies (Pantios School
of Political Sciences, Athens, 1981-1982).Teaching in NTUA since 1983.
Responsible for the postgraduate seminar of “History and Theory of Landscape
Design”. Publications of architectural projects and scientific articles,
participations in collective editions, author of tutorial book, concerning
landscape design. Numerous distinctions in architectural competitions in Greece
and Cyprus. Two 1st prize distinctions in International Architectural
Competitions: Urban and Landscape Design for the city of Lviv – Ukrania (2008),
Design for the Centre of Holistic Medicine in Allonisos – Greece (1998). Member
of the Greek Philosophical Society. Member of the Hellenic Society for
Aesthetics.
Email: mor@arsisarc.gr
Mohamed Moulfi, Géophilosophie et révolution chez G.
Deleuze.
L'intérêt de la problématique de la géophilosophie,
articulée aux questions de la territorialisation/déterritorialisation, de la
géo-histoire, des rhizomes, etc., se trouve dans l'enjeu de la vision de G.
Deleuze et F. Guattari, qui veut que la philosophie se déploie selon les ordres
de la transcendance et de l'immanence. Le premier ordre est déterminé par
l'origine grecque. Si l'origine n'est pas aussi déterminante, elle ne décide
pas moins du rapport constitutif avec la non-philosophie. C'est dire la
nécessité de penser l'autre ordre dans lequel s'arrachent les
"géophilosophies", comme rencontre de la philosophie avec les
cultures. Mais le devenir de la philosophie est-il seulement l'effet d'une
"axiomatique immanente" dont résulte une Bestimmung, comme
destination de la philosophie, grecque de naissance, et comme détermination de
la variation historique et culturelle de son expression ? Avec cette question,
on atteindra à la proximité pensée par G. Deleuze et F. Guattari de la
révolution qui, comme la philosophie, est résistance au présent et ouverture
sur l'imprévisible, le nouveau, le remarquable, l'intéressant, caractères au
cœur de la problématique du devenir et de la traductibilité. D’où l’exigence de
tenter de répondre à la question du rapport historique des destinataires de la
destination "secrète" pour comprendre la philosophie dans son
historicité et dans l’historicité de la destination générale qui s’appelle
l’Occident.
Mohamed Moulfi est Professeur de Philosophie à
l'Université d'Oran (Algeria).Membre de Internationale Hegel-Gesellschaft e.V,
Berlin (2007). Advisor Editor dans Décalages. Althusser Studies Journal (Los
Angeles) (2013).
Auteur de Engels : philosophie et sciences (Paris,
L’Harmattan, 2004), et d'autres articles in Dictionnaire critique du marxisme
(G. Bensussan et G. Labica, dir., Paris, PUF, 1985 and 1999) ; in Dictionnaire
du darwinisme et de l’évolutionnisme (dir. P. Tort, Paris, PUF, 1997) ; Derrida
: Le sens du monde, in Sur les traces de Derrida, (Toulouse, Actes Sud-Alger
Barzakh, 2009) ; Philosophie et falsafa, in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,
n° 4, 2009 ; De l’Etat à l’Etat politique. Notes inchoatives sur l’instauration
démocratique, in Studia Politica, n° 3, 2011 ; Notes sur l’Ausgang, in Georges
Labica : Philosophie en colère, CNRPH, Alger, 2012 ; Propos sur la question de
l’interculturalité, in Revue Laros, n° 8, avril 2011 ; Althusser, lecteur de
Machiavel, in Décalages, an Althusser Studies Journal, Los Angeles, 2013 ;
Hegel et la négativité. Philosophie et histoire, in "Hegel and
modernity", Hegel-Jahrbuch, Berlin, 2014 ; Recension Robespierre. Une
politique de la philosophie de Georges Labica, in Contretemps, n° 20, 1er trim.
2014.
Doxanews@hotmail.com
Athena Moustaka
The active and vibrant agency of matter within a
network of human and non-human agencies, has been limitedly explored in the bibliography
with regards to the potential it offers for understanding what shapes an
architectural experience.
My research investigates the listed concrete in a
post-war Social Housing development. The way non-human actors operate with
human ones in a network of agencies is revealed through its lens. The material
exposes how its properties act within a network of social, visual and aesthetic
parameters, critically positioned between extremities that on the one hand view
matter as an inert component of the built environment and material determinism
on the other.
In this presentation I will start by drawing upon
Deleuzian vocabulary to describe the building as an assemblage of human and
non-human actors all operating in a network.
I will then focus on the notion of comfort which I
argue should not be confined to a tight definition but should include
parameters of the visual, social and the aesthetic.
The ability of concrete to serve multiple purposes and
morph into different roles is what causes a building assemblage to behave in a
comfortable or uncomfortable way; never in an absolute manner but always
in-between; never linearly but always lacking causality; never seeking to be
finalized but always changing.
Athena graduated with a degree in Architecture from
the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2005, and a Masters from the Welsh
School of Architecture. She is currently a graduate student and teaching
assistant in the University of Manchester, and a Chartered Member of the Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA) maintaining strong links with
Architectural Practice.
Athena is currently writing her thesis in
object-oriented architectural ontologies, advised by Professor Albena Yaneva
and Dr. Isabelle Doucet. Her research focuses on the role of concrete as a
vital material agent. In her work, concrete is viewed through the perspective
of new materialist ontologies, through which it becomes active in shaping the
experience of the built environment. She has previously presented her work in
the Universities of Liverpool, Central Lancashire, and Manchester Metropolitan.
Athena.moustaka@manchester.ac.uk
Charity N. Mwaniki and Eric Harper, The production of
an anxiety dream space machine
The problem we wish to address is the ever increasing
construction of docile bodies and chemical imprisonment of those categorised as
mad, bad or sad. We outline the paradoxes of treatment for those labelled as
having mental health and dual diagnostic challenges. Talk of supporting choice,
reengagement with the community and building resilience occurs alongside the
enforcement of treatment compliance, surveillance and recording of daily
behaviour and the construction of barriers that prevent access service,
especially for individuals from non-western backgrounds. The unofficial aim is
to construct places that flatten out excessive and unwanted intensities and
affects that make ‘us’ feel unsafe! How different this to dreaming and dream
space laboratories where there is a metamorphosis of the persons relationship
to their surroundings. What can an anxiety-dream machine do? It has the
potential to create new assemblages that invites life as opposed to sleep
walking. The anxiety-dream machine is a space where there is the potential
breaking and unfolding of those habitual lines imprinted on the flesh thereby
allowing for movement. This force field provides a potential
de-territorialisation, a transversal that plays with many relational
possibilities that always include an ‘AND’ - me and not me and mother and self
and teddy and image and animal and thoughts and sensations and affects, AND...
We consider the spontaneous construction of spaces that allow for anxiety dream
time as they support people in their journey across unbearable intensities and
compare this with the formal institutional settings.
Charity Njoki Mwaniki is an architecture graduate and
is currently a resident artist at Numbi arts. She has exhibited works at Oxford
House in London as part of the Somali Week Festival and at the Art Market in
Budapest as part of the La Grande Migration. She has one publication Multiple
Dreams. From Hillman to Deleuze. Harper, E and Mwaniki, C Mantis Publications.
Jungian Journal. 2014.
charity@numbi.org
