Index: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/AffectiveInfrastructures
FINAL VERSION_EDITED
“What remains for our pedagogy of unlearning is to build affective infrastructures that admit the work of desire as the work of an aspirational ambivalence. What remains is the potential we have to common infrastructures that absorb the blows of our agressive need for the world to accommodate us [...].”
— Lauren Berlant, The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times
Affective Infrastructures revisits the understanding of the notion of infrastructures and its relation to affect. It is one of two newly introduced Study Circles that frame the 2019 edition of transmediale and are part of the core program of the festival days. In response to the festival theme, the Study Circles bring together artists, researchers, and activists in working groups taking place before, during, and after transmediale 2019 in order to strengthen the festival as a site of knowledge exchange by involving participants at an early stage. Affective Infrastructures takes place in close cooperation with TIER.space. Already hosting a series of working meetings, during the festival itself TIER.space will also curate a program at their venue responding to the Study Circle topics.
Taking as a starting point the aspiration of technologies to capture emotions and control bodies, Affective Infrastructures examines how they mediate and regulate life. It emphasizes how systems based on machine reading or face and voice recognition can influence and police behaviors, classify habits, and influence collective feeling. Acknowledging affect itself as a powerful infrastructure, the members of the Study Circle ask: How can we move towards technologies that would accommodate multiplicity and difference? In which ways can categories that predefine experiences and lives be complexified? How can the lived experiences of material and affective infrastructures be used to mobilize bodies, energize politics, and bring about change? Which modes of learning and doing can empower new forms of worldbuilding?
Following Lauren Berlant’s approach that habits, norms, patterns, and affective assemblages are what bind us to each other and to the world itself, the Study Circle (re)turns to these elements as part of its exploration. By sharing knowledge, reflections, and practices, the participants discuss infrastructures with regard to lived experience: these include examples such as feminist servers, online #MeToo lists, the commons, cruising for sex and foraging for mushrooms as manifestations of binding moments and points of contact.
As a response to the problematics of care and empathy—and the forms of power and privilege that they involve—the potential of spaces that lie between autonomy and interdependency, non-sovereignty and agency, taxonomy and messiness are in the foreground of this discussion. Aiming to think and move beyond hegemonic systems, this Study Circle instead attends to hesitant, delirious, and imaginative living infrastructures (and technologies) that can embrace affective differences, multiple temporalities, and meaningful complexities.
The cooperation between transmediale and TIER.space, Spektrum, and Import Projects is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
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This study circle revisits the understanding of the notion of infrastructure and its relation to affect. Taking as a starting point the aspiration of technologies to capture emotions and interpret bodies, it examines how they mediate and regulate life. It emphasizes how systems based on machine reading, face and voice recognition can ‘police’ behaviours, classify habits and influence collective feeling. Acknowledging affect itself as a powerful infrastructure, the artists, scholars, designers and activists joining this exploration ask:
How can we move towards technologies that would accommodate multiplicity and difference? In which ways can categories that predifine experiences and lives be complexified? Which forms of learning and doing can help in creating infrastructures that point towards new forms of worldbuilding?
Following Lauren Berlant’s approach that habits, norms, patterns and affective assemblages are what bind us to each other and to the world itself, the Study Circle (re)turns to these elements as part of its exploration. Through the sharing of knowledges, reflections and practices the participants discuss infrastructures with regard to lived experience. Feminist servers, #MeToo online lists, cruising for sex and foraging for mushrooms are some of these examples that manifest binding moments and points of contact. The promising spaces between autonomy and interdependency, nonsovereignty and agency, taxonomy and messiness are in the foreground of this discussion, as a response to the problematics of care, empathy and the forms of power and privilege that they involve. Aiming to think and move beyond hegemonic systems, this study cricle attends to hesitant, delirious and imaginative living infrastructures that can embrace affective differences, multiple temporalities and meaningful complexities.
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NEW Try out 15.10 / simplified based on all versions so far...
This study circle revisits the understanding of the notion of infrastructure and its relation to affect. Taking as a starting point the aspiration of technologies to capture emotions and interpret bodies, it examines how they mediate and regulate life. It emphasizes how systems based on machine reading, face and voice recognition (1) can ‘police’ behaviours, classify habits and influence collective feeling. Acknowledging affect itself as a powerful infrastructure, the artists, scholars, designers and activists joining this exploration ask:
How can we move towards technologies that would accommodate multiplicity and difference? In which ways can categories that predifine experiences and lives be complexified? Which forms of learning and doing can help in creating infrastructures that point towards new forms of worldbuilding?
Following Lauren Berlant’s approach that habits, norms, patterns and affective assemblages are what bind us to each other and to the world itself, the Study Circle (re)turns to these elements as part of its exploration. Through the sharing of knowledges, reflections and practices the participants discuss infrastructures with regard to lived experience. Feminist servers, #MeToo online lists, cruising for sex and foraging for mushrooms are some of these examples that manifest binding moments and points of contact. The promising spaces between autonomy and interdependency, nonsovereignty and agency, taxonomy and messiness are in the foreground of this discussion, as a response to the problematics of care, empathy and the forms of power and privilege that they involve. Aiming to think and move beyond hegemonic systems, this study cricle attends to hesitant, delirious and imaginative living infrastructures that can embrace affective differences, multiple temporalities and meaningful complexities.
(1) I was trying hard to make it descriptive. from bridges to Ai assistatns... this was the clearest but also driest
Try out 14.10
“What remains for our pedagogy of unlearning is to build affective infrastructures that admit the work of desire as the work of an aspirational ambivalence. What remains is the potential we have to common infrastructures that absorb the blows of our agressive need for the world to accommodate us.”
Lauren Berlant. The commons: infrastructures for troubling times , 2016
This study circle examines the role of affect-driven and affect-generating infrastructures in the formation of contemporary lived experience. Taking into consideration the increasing use of technologies of care but also policing, the study circle revisits the understanding of infrastructures in relation to affect. It questions the aspiration of today's technologies to capture emotions and interpret bodies (1), and it underlines the regimes of classification emerging therein. It rethinks the ways in which they mediate and organise life, and it emphasises the urge for ones that can accommodate multiplicity and difference. The artists, scholars, designers and activists joining this exploration ask:
What happens when affect itself is understood as an infrastructure? How can these acknowledge (2) diverse ways of living and empower new forms of worldbuilding?
If, as Berlant puts it, habits, norms, patterns and scenes of affective assemblage are what bind us to each other and to the world itself, then these elements can assist in re-inhabiting existing systems and creating different ones. Experiences, knowledges and practices are at the forefront of this study circle, aiming to critically explore the potential for infrastructures that allow the possibilities for access and intimacy. beyond constraints and enclosures. Feminist servers; #MeToo online lists of sexual harassers; the co-existence of cruising for sex and foraging for mushrooms in city parks; lethargy and negative affects; are only a few of the examples used to discuss the promising spaces between autonomy and interdependency, nonsovereignty and agency, taxonomy and messiness. Aiming to think and move beyond hegemonic infrastructures, the study circle attends to hesitant, delirious and imaginative infrastructures that can embrace affective differences, multiple temporalities and meaningful complexities.
(comment on tricky/ slippery experiment still missing)
I'm trying to weave it in - but it is tricky.-
(1) if i add capture, manage and measure emotions then the bodies word needs to be kicked out
I think this phrasing is fine - MG
(2) not sure if this edit is ok in terms of flow of the text . eg. these? which ?
Shall we say
Can diverse ways of living and new forms of worldbuilding then be empowered?
A Study Circle on Affective Infrastructures
“What remains for our pedagogy of unlearning is to build affective infrastructures that admit the work of desire as the work of an aspirational ambivalence. What remains is the potential we have to common infrastructures that absorb the blows of our agressive need for the world to accommodate us.”
Lauren Berlant
This study circle examines the role of affect-driven and affect-generating infrastructures in the formation of contemporary lived experience. It questions the aspiration of today's technologies to capture, manage and measure emotions and bodies and the regimes of classification emerging therein. The Study Circle underlines desire for 'affective scenes' (*) that can accommodate multiplicity and difference. The artists, designers, activists, and scholars joining this study circle revisit the very understanding of the notion of infrastructure and its relation to affect. [how are infrastructures generally understood, infrastructuralisation of life and its consequence for how we relate. current condition] What else might constitute infrastructures [known infrastructures fall short. and this is why we think it is important to bring these two words together, now]? How do we conceive of the immateriality of affect within the framework of 'infrastructure'? What are the binding elements and points of contact [between what and what?] ? How do they [what, affect or infrastructure or affective infrastructures?] connect to diverse ways of living and forms of worldbuilding? What diverse ways of living and forms of worldbuilding might we conceive of if we understand affect as infrastructure? (these are all possible alternate framings of the same question -asked for clarification)
If, as Berlant puts it, habits, norms and patterns themselves constitute an infrastructure that binds us to each other and to the world itself, then these elements might also be used to reinhabit existing systems and to create new ones. Experiences, knowledges and practices are at the forefront of this study circle, aiming to critically explore the potential for infrastructures that allow the possibilities for access and intimacy beyond constraints and enclosures. How does a spreadsheet become an infrastructure for outing harassers? What would a feminist server be? What does it mean when urban mushrooms-hunters find public sex instead? [land as a bridge between traditional and future/affective infrastructures], what does it mean when lethargy becomes an ... [The role of negative affect - sentimentalism as an infrastructure].
(need to make this more clear - ie. what aspects of the land?) are only a few of the examples used to discuss the promising spaces between autonomy and interdependency, nonsovereignty and agency, stability [taxonomy?] and messiness. The problematics of care and empathy -with the forms of power and privilege that they involve- are in the foreground of these explorations, while bodies are understood as repositories for alternative ways of knowledge and lived experience. Aiming to think and move beyond 'residual categories' [I feel like you may need to explain what this means] (Leigh Star, Bowker) and hegemonic infrastructures, this study circle attends to [explores? invites you to explore?] hesitant, delirious and imaginative infrastructures that can embrace affective differences (Munoz), multiple temporalities and meaningful complexities.
This is tricky, hard to frame - we want to engage with the slipperyness.
A Study Circle on Affective Infrastructures
“What remains for our pedagogy of unlearning is to build affective infrastructures that admit the work of desire as the work of an aspirational ambivalence. What remains is the potential we have to common infrastructures that absorb the blows of our agressive need for the world to accommodate us.”
Lauren Berlant
This study circle examines the role of affect-driven and affect-generating infrastructures in the formation of contemporary lived experience. It questions the aspiration of today's technologies to capture, manage and measure emotions and bodies and the regimes of classification emerging therein. The Study Circle underlines desire for 'affective scenes' (* )that can accommodate multiplicity and difference. The artists, designers, activists, and scholars joining this study circle revisit the very understanding of the notion of infrastructure and its relation to affect. What else might constitutes infrastructures? How do we conceive of the immateriality of affect within the framework of 'infrastructure'? What are the binding elements and points of contact [ between what and what?] ? How do they [what, affect or infrastructure or affective infrastructures?] connect to diverse ways of living and forms of worldbuilding? What diverse ways of living and forms of worldbuilding might we conceive of if we understand affect as infrastructure? (these are all possible alternate framings of the same question -asked for clarification)
If, as Berlant puts it, habits, norms and patterns themselves constitute an infrastructure that binds us to each other and to the world itself, then these elements might [2] also be used to reinhabit existing systems and to create new ones. Experiences, knowledges and practices are at the forefront of this study circle, aiming to critically explore the potential for infrastructures that allow the possibilities for access and intimacy beyond constraints and enclosures. Feminist servers; #MeToo online lists of sexual harassers; xxxxx; cruising for sex and foraging for mushrooms in city parks or land itself (need to make this more clear - ie. what aspects of the land?) are only a few of the examples used to discuss the promising spaces between [4] autonomy and interdependency, nonsovereignty and agency, stability [taxonomy?] and messiness. The problematics of care and empathy -with the forms of power and privilege that they involve- are in the foreground of these explorations, while bodies are understood as repositories for alternative ways of knowledge and lived experience. Aiming to think and move beyond 'residual categories' [I feel like you may need to explain what this means] (Leigh Star, Bowker) and hegemonic infrastructures, this study circle attends to [explores? invites you to explore?] hesitant, delirious and imaginative infrastructures that can embrace affective differences (Munoz), multiple [manifold?] temporalities and meaningful complexities.
How does a spreadsheet become an infrastructure for outing harassers? What would a feminist server be? What does it mean when urban mushrooms-hunters find public sex instead? [land as a bridge between traditional and future/affective infrastructures], what does it mean when lethargy becomes an ...
The role of negative affect - sentimentalism as an infrastructure
References (should be added,no?)
[1] I think 'possibility' gives too much credit; the hopefulness in this non-ambivalent aspiration works better?
that is correct! i just feel that with aspiration we go very close to Berlant s phrasing
[2] To be a bit careful maybe with affect becoming a positive force per-se. Hui-Hui: 'Engineers tell me that infrastrcture is the stuff you can kick'
ok! yes this is the classic Lisa Parks quote . Trick is that we want to move beyond this materiality of infrastructures be it bridges or network cables ... :)
And even this type of infrastructures does involve some affectivity... infrastructures are always there to support / connect/ offer services of some sort.
[3] I do not remember/cannot find back in our notes what example you refer to with 'hashtags'; would be nice to qualify/complicate the example a bit?
You got me here! No it was not suggested as such. I loved Mayas reference to a list connected to the metoo movement as an infrastructure. But when I wrote lists in it was not easy to understand
[4] Or: 'the spaces of possibility between'. For me, the study circle is an attempt to pay attention to what is at the interstices, rather than at the binary extremes so I find it important to make that explicit here.
This is true! :)
* - Note from Maya: I put affective scenes in single inverted commas ' .. ' because I think we need to highlight certain phrases as not commonplace, not widely understood. I would also like to know what we mean by 'affective scenes'.
DD comments
- shall we keep the Berlant quote in the beginning?
Maya: Yes!
FIRST VERSION
“What remains for our pedagogy of unlearning is to build affective infrastructures that admit the work of desire as the work of an aspirational ambivalence. What remains is the potential we have to common infrastructures that absorb the blows of our agressive need for the world to accommodate us.”
Lauren Berlant
Contemporary lived experience is nowadays captured, mediated and simulated by today’s affect-driven and affect-generating infrastructures. Τechnologies with increasingly sentic properties, machines that feel, hear and see promise to make users themselves more aware, sensible and empathetic. Infrastructures of policing and care detect and classify habits, synch behaviours and emotions and are able to measure and manage collective feeling. How does this liveness and the affordances of today’s technologies affect one’s capacity to affect and be affected in a period of socio-political conflicts and divides? What role do the fixed classifications and residual interpretations play and how can they be opposed? Which forms of learning and doing can help in this process?
The Study Circle on Affective Infrastructures will take such questions as a starting point in order to one hand address the process of today’s sovereign systems and on the other hand to examine the potential for transformational ones. If as Berlant puts it affects, habits and behaviours are themselves an infrastructure that binds us to each other and to the world, how can these be used as a methodology for reinhabiting existing systems and building new ones? How can critical care (Puig della Bellacasa) assist in new living classifications (Bowker & Leigh Star), ones that are open to ambiguity, multiplicity and constant movement? Turning again to possible technologies of kinship and tools of conviviality, the discussions, interventions and prototypes of this study circle will aim to re-imagine the potential of building new bonds among each other and the surrounding environment.