SEAM Symposium 2009 Keynote Sessions

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image credit: Mike Elith (photographer) Dean Walsh and David Clarkson Mirror Mirror

KEYNOTE SESSIONS
17 & 18 SEPTEMBER 6.30 PM
LOCATION: Customs House, Circular Quay

SEAM 2009 is proud to present four leading theorists at Customs House, Sydney. Over two nights they will explore the seams and ruptures between animate bodies, built environments and their representation.

Prof Brian Massumi and Prof Andrew Benjamin
17 SEPTEMBER 6.30PM
Tickets $15, limited seats, to book and pay by credit card call Katy on
02 9362 9403 or 02 9362 4023
For enquiries email Katy at SEAM2009@criticalpath.org.au

This will be a unique opportunity to see two eminent, international philosophers in conversation on the body and architecture. Brian Massumi and Andrew Benjamin bring to architecture a critical rethinking of the ways new kinds of spaces construct and are constructed by the body. Both speakers will begin with a short introduction of ideas, followed by an open discussion. With the projects of Dutch architecture firm NOX as the point of contact between Massumi and Benjamin, the conversation will engage with the urban body, material surface and new forms of architecture, and embodied cognition and perception.

Brian Massumi is an internationally respected philosopher, cultural theorist and social critic, initially famous for his translation of ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari into English. He has written and worked extensively across the disciplines of art, architecture, politics and philosophy. His many books include, ‘Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation’ (2002), ‘The Politics of Everyday Fear’ (1993) and ‘A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari’ (1992).

Andrew Benjamin is one of world’s leading architectural philosophers. He is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics and Director of the Research Unit in European Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. Benjamin’s many books include ‘Architectural Philosophy’ (2000), ‘Disclosing Spaces: On Painting’ (2004) and ‘Style and Time, Essays on the Politics of Appearance’ (2006).

Prof Erin Manning and Dr Pia Ednie-Brown
A Dance of Attention: Choreography as Mobile Architecture
18 SEPTEMBER 6.30PM
Tickets $15, limited seats, to book and pay by credit card call Katy on
02 9362 9403 or 02 9362 4023
For enquiries email Katy at SEAM2009@criticalpath.org.au

Our second keynote presentation will examine in more visceral detail the possibilities of bodily interactions with environments. We are delighted to have two truly transdisciplinary thinkers working across the fields of sensation, the body and architectural space.

Erin Manning will present her theory of art and touch in the context of her current project ‘Folds to Infinity’, which has been installed in Montreal, Berlin and Brazil. The presentation will delve into the idea of enabling constraints in an exploration of how improvisation meets choreography in participatory events, exploring the role of touch within these participatory ecologies. Pia Ednie-Brown will discuss the erotic resonance of transdisciplinarity, as understood in terms of emergence, affect and ethics. Through examples, she will explore engagement with this transversal eroticism in both valuing and generating compositional vitality in the performances and objects we make.

Erin Manning is assistant professor in studio art and film studies at Concordia University (Montréal, Canada) as well as director of The Sense Lab, an interdisciplinary environment that explores the active relation between the philosophical, artistic and political sensing body in movement. Her artwork is primarily devoted to painting and sculpture. She dances Argentine Tango professionally. Publications include ‘Relationscapes’ (2009), ‘Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty’ (2006) and ‘Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in Canada’ (2003).

Pia Ednie-Brown is a writer, designer and educator based in Melbourne, Australia. She lectures at RMIT University in the Architecture program and the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL). Her design research practice, 'Onomatopoeia', engages with various forms of writing, participatory events, interactive installations, animations, sculptural objects and drawing. Her recently published book, ‘Plastic Green; designing for environmental transformation’ (2009), offers an account of one of her cross-disciplinary project collaborations with other researchers and students at RMIT.