Sunday, March 16, 2014


MEDIATIC AFFECTS, BIOLOGICAL PATHOS AND THE PSYCHOTECHNOLOGY OF GENDER
BA, second year, National University of Arts Bucharest

2012-2013, open course

Address: Str. General Budisteanu nr. 19
Foto-video department, room 54

How did the new postfordist economy change the mechanisms of art production and the politics of the art museum at the end of the twentieth century? What is the relationship between the new mode of production in the global economy and the mode of production, exhibition and valorization in the arts? The economic circuits have de-materialized, the industrial production has been exported to territories outside the global North while the present valorization mechanisms are primarily based on affect (fear, panic, pathos, hope, compassion), knowledge (information economy, technology, anticipation of public opinion), subjectivity (the new flexible self, the avatarization of personal image) and lived experience. Accelerated and modulated through media technologies and social networks, public moods are managed to maintain and develop a global affective capitalism.

The course will question contemporary practices in the extended field of art that enter in a dialogue with the present production mode. We will analyze together the ways in which collective and individual affectivity is put to work by financial capitalism, how the media image flow contributes to the emotionalization of the public sphere and how the artistic act is integrated (or not) in the economical and political mechanisms - taking into account that the artist, seen as the main producer of image and sentiment becomes a role model on the "free" market of flexibility and precarity. Following the generalization of mediatic transmission (mass media, social algorithmic connectivity), the affective contagion is without precedent. For the audience of the economic and political spectacle there seems to be no option to disconnect - viewers play at the same time the role of spectator and the role of actor. If the worker of the fordist factory, detached from the object of her work, could at least afford a mental escapism at work and mostly in her leisure activities, the worker of the present immaterial economy works ceaselessly on the assembly lines of big brands - or better said the two modes work in parallel. To what extent does the artist succeed in producing shortcircuits, fissures, re-assemblages?

The lectures and seminars will engage in discussions on affect theory and cyberfeminism with its posthumanist roots, following notions of affect (human and nonhuman) and body (starting from Spinoza, Deleuze and embodied cognition). In the discussions we will question the present dominance of the neuroculture and search for non-dichotomous concepts which glue back mind to body and affect to brain.


#meeting 1
26.10.2012 AFFECTIVE LABOUR: FROM INDUSTRIAL TO IMMATERIAL LABOUR Alina Popa

Reading material:
Michael Hardt. Affective Labor. boundary 2. 26:89–100, 1999.
Arlie Hochschild. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Juan Martin Prada. Economies of Affectivity, 2006.
http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Economies-of-affectivity

#meeting 2
5.12.2012 LOVE AS RESOURCE: SOUTH TO NORTH HEART TRANSPLANT Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Michael Hardt and Leonard Schwartz. A Conversation with Michael Hardt on the Politics of Love. Interval(le)s II.2-III.1, Fall 2008/Winter 2009.
http://www.cipa.ulg.ac.be/intervalles4/73_shwartz.pdf
Arlie Hochschild. Love and Gold. In Women, Power and Justice: A Global Perspective edited by Luciana Ricciutelli, London, Toronto: Zed/Innana Books, 2005.
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/HochschildLoveandGold.pdf

#meeting 3
7.12.2012 LOVE AND FEAR Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Sara Ahmed. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Chapter 3 The Affective Politics of Fear.
Michael Hardt, About Love, European Graduate School conference, 2007.

#meeting 4
12.12.2012 READING SEMINAR Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Sara Ahmed. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Chapter 3 The Affective Politics of Fear.
http://archive.org/details/TheCulturalPoliticsOfEmotion

#meeting 5
14.12.2012 AFFECTIVE MODULATIONS OF FEAR POLITICS Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Brian Massumi. Fear (The Spectrum Said). In positions 13:1, Duke University Press, 2005.
Brian Massumi. The Remains of the Day, 2011 http://historiesofviolence.com/reflections/brian-massumi-the-remains-of-the-day/
Brian Massumi (Ed.). The Politics of Everyday Fear. Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Hito Steyerl. The Empire of the Senses, 2007. http://eipcp.net/transversal/1007/steyerl/en

#meeting 6
15.01.2013 CANNIBALISM (human, animal and mediatic) Alina Popa

Reading material:
Sara Ahmed. The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. http://archive.org/details/TheCulturalPoliticsOfEmotion
Michel de Montaigne. On Cannibals (1580).
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_2/montaigne.html
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Metafísicas caníbales Líneas de antropología postestructural, Madrid: Katz Editores, 2011.
Nicole Shukin. Animal Capital Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009 (Last chapter: Animal Cannibalism).
Steven Shaviro. Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales in Film-Philosophy Journal, Vol 14, No 1 (2010). http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/220

#meeting 7
18.01.2013 GUEST LECTURE: WE ARE ALL REPTILIANS NOW Florin Flueras

Abstract: The relationship between the contemporary modes of production and mediatic acceleration with their effects on the emphaty in our type of society. The analysis is made through the pop culture, B movies and conspiracy theories modes of portraying the recent changes in contemporary subjectivity. The reptilian was the main example used because its embodiment of the characteristics that in this kind of marginal theories and B movies were prefigured for our present form of life.

Reading material:
Florin Flueras. We are All Reptilians Now, 2012 http://florinflueras.blogspot.ro/2012/08/we-are-all-reptilians-now.html
Akseli Virtanen. Arbitrary Power. A Critique of Biopolitical Economy, n-1 Publications, forthcoming 2013.
Boris Groys. Self-Design and Aesthetic Responsibility.  http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/68
Gary Olson. Empathy and Neuropolitics: This is your brain on neoliberal culture. Any questions? http://home.moravian.edu/public/polsci/pdfs/EmpathyAnd%20Neuropolitics.pdf
Jim Crave. Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2007/02/capitalism-system-run-by-and-for.html?m=1
Michael T. Taussig. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan, Playboy Magazine, March 1969.

FORMS OF LIFE AND THE NEW SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY Alina Popa
Reading material:
Franco “Bifo” Berardi. Precarious Rhapsody, London: Minor Compositions, 2009.

#meeting 8, 9, 10
22.01, 25.01, 29.01.2013 STUDENTS RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS + FEEDBACK

LOYAL TO THE BRAND - Sebastian Apostol
AFFECTIVITY LABOUR IN ILLEGAL CHILD EMPLOYMENT Bogdan Cazacioc
FREEDOM AND FEAR Andrei Casandra
A HISTORICAL VIEW ON AFFECTS AS POLITICAL CONCEPTS - Sandra Demetrescu
CONSUMERIST DISORDERS. ESSAY ABOUT THE FEAR OF NOT HAVING Andreea Goia
AFFECTIVE MODULATIONS OF THE END OF THE WORLD - Loredana Gutu
LOVE FOR THE STRANGER IN GAY SOAPS - Alexandra Ivanciu
TRANSPLANT AS MODERN FORM OF CANNIBALISM - Ana Secheres

#meeting 11
5.03.2013 MELODRAMA AND THE POLITICS OF ARTIFICE, Alina Popa & Irina Gheorghe

Screening of Soy mi madre, Phil Collins, 2008.
Reading material:
Shaviro Steven. Once More with Feeling (blogpost) http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=406
Douglas Sirk - film collection

#meeting 12
8.03.2013 WHAT CAN A BODY DO? Alina Popa

Reading material:
Baruch Spinoza. Ethics: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters, S. Feldman (ed.), Cambridge and Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.
Antonio Damasio. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain, New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc, 2003. 
Brian Massumi. Parables for the Virtual, Durham, NY: Duke University Press, 2002 (Chapter 1: The Autonomy of Affect).
Silvia Federici. The Caliban and the Witch, New York: Autonomedia, 2004.

#meeting 13
12.03.2013 AFFECT, EMOTION, FEELING Alina Popa
Reading material: 
Eric Shouse, Feeling, Emotion, Affect, 2005 http://t.co/XGZWpDBL
Navigating Movements, Interview with Brian Massumi, 2002 http://www.brianmassumi.com/interviews/NAVIGATING%20MOVEMENTS.pdf

+ going together to Oneworld documentary festival - Girl Model, directed by David Redmon / Ashley Sabin, 2011

#meeting 14
15.03.2013 READING SEMINAR Alina Popa and Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Brian Massumi, Autonomy of Affect in Parables for the Virtual, Durham, NY: Duke University Press, 2002.
http://cr.middlebury.edu/amlit_civ/allen/2012%20backup/scholarship/affect%20theory/massumi.pdf

#meeting 15
19.03.2013 AFFECTIVE CONTAGION Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Gustave Le Bon. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, New York: Dover, 2002.
Teresa Brennan. The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Anna Gibbs. Contagious Feelings: Pauline Hanson and the Epidemiology of Affect, Australian Humanities Review 2001. http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-December-2001/gibbs.html
Jussi Parikka. Contagion and Repetition: On the Viral Logic of Network Culture, ephemera journal volume 7(2), 2007. 
http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/contagion-and-repetition-viral-logic-network-culture

#meeting 16
22.03.2013 NEUROSCIENCE COURSE Faculty of Medicine

http://www.neuroscience.ro/crs.html
trolling seminar

#meeting 17
26.03.2013 READING SEMINAR Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
Marshall McLuhan, The Playboy Interview, Playboy Magazine, March 1969

#meeting 18
22.05.2013 NONHUMAN AFFECT: SPECULATIVE REALISM VS AFFECT THEORY Alina Popa & Irina Gheorghe

Reading material:
The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, editors Melbourne: re.press, 2011
Reza Negarestani. Cyclonopedia. Complicity with Anonymous Materials, Melbourne: re.press, 2008
Ben Woodard. On an Ungrounded Earth Towards a New Geophilosophy, punctum books ✶ brooklyn, ny 2013
Donna Haraway. The Cyborg Manifesto, 1985
Luciana Parisi & Steve Goodman. The Affect of Nanoterror, 2005
http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewArticle/29/36

#meeting 19
26.05.2013
READING SEMINAR: CYBERFEMINISM, BACTERIAL SEX AND THE AFFECT OF NANOTERROR Alina Popa
Reading material:
Luciana Parisi & Steve Goodman, The Affect of Nanoterror, 2005 http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewArticle/29/36

#meeting 20
30.04.2013 READING SEMINAR Alina Popa & Irina Gheorghe 
Reading material:
http://viralcontagion.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/images-from-virality-future-project-with-artists-at-uel/
Tony Sampson. Contagion Theory Beyond the Microbe, 2011 http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=675#_ednref13
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 (Foreword by Brian Massumi + Introduction: Rhizome)
Tony D. Sampson, Virality. Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2012

#meeting 21, 22, 2322.06, 23.06, 25.06.2013 GUEST LECTURES: AFFECTIVE VIRALITY Tony Sampson & Luciana Parisi



last seminar 30.04.2013 in Cismigiu