Jordan Crandall, "Something Happening: Absorptive Assemblage"
| What | |
|---|---|
| When |
2008-12-04 04:10 PM
2008-12-04 06:00 PM
December 04, 2008 from 04:10 pm to 06:00 pm |
| Where | 126 Voorhies |
| Contact Name | Fatima M. Garcia |
| Contact Email | culturalstudies@ucdavis.edu |
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Cultural Studies Graduate Group & STS
Jordan Crandall
Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts, UCSD
"'Something Happening': Absorptive Assemblage"
Thursday, December 4
*126 Voorhies*
I am interested in a certain sense of wanting to be "in" something: to participate in it, to connect with it, to synchronize with it, to be caught up with it, rather than to visually possess it. The desire to be /attuned/ to something that is happening, or that might happen at any moment -- not necessarily as a conscious thought, but as a vaguely felt expectation. The desire to move toward something that is (or might be) happening, in order to absorb its force, touch it, taste it, surrender to it -- rather than simply to observe it.
This is an immersive, absorptive ecology that cannot be understood primarily in terms of visual mastery or language. It does not privilege reading but readiness. Rather than possessing something from a distance, it is about a surrender to it -- an extreme intimacy, a merging. One does not look from afar, fortifying the self, but rather enters into the fray, exposing the self. This immersive dynamic stands in contrast to analytical models built on the primacy of voyeuristic separation. It challenges the dominance of a foundational condition of spectatorship -- or the understanding of media in terms of its capacity to produce a spectatorial relation.
My presentation will situate this dynamic in the context of assemblage theory. Focusing on the assemblage's absorptive qualities, the assemblage becomes an anticipatory, happening-something that exerts a gravitational pull -- an absorptive energy that can be understood in terms of desire/./ My model of the assemblage is influenced by that of Manuel De Landa, in his expansion of Deleuze's original concept. In developing my model, I have incorporated other references -- chiefly, Brian Massumi's theories of affect; the actor-network orientations of Bruno Latour; and the media ecologies of Vilem Flusser. I have also been influenced by Bataille's theories of expenditure; Lacan's notion of the "sinthome" by way of Zizek; and Keller Easterling's concept of "spatial formulas." In my focus on an erotics of the assemblage, it has become a vehicle of obscene enjoyment -- an event-in-formation that, in combining the reassurance of the familiar with the thrill of the potential, conveys both routine and change, enticement and anguish. An undulating lustful thing, dripping.
My presentational approach is inspired by writers who are experimenting with critical fiction from an anthropological perspective, and for whom fiction can operate as a form of analysis -- writers such as Michael Taussig, Alphonso Lingis, and Kathleen Stewart. Rather than adopting a disembodied analytical stance, I will present my material from an implicated position, performing/ /the content rather than elaborating it from afar. I will avoid relying on a specialized analytical vocabulary, and instead to enact the theory in the space of everyday experience -- focusing on experiential scenes and intensive encounters that have the potential to cut across specialized discourses and disciplinary divides. On the one hand, my presentation zooms in close, aiming for a quality of intimacy, presence, and affective charge: a material openness to unexpected forms of erotic encounter. On the other hand, it works laterally, conducting transversal operations across object-boundaries, attuned to the rhythms, circuits, and layered ecologies that constitute the phenomenal world.
California STS Network!