Description
So Close Yet So Far Away: the Proximity of the Universe The universe may seem an unlikely subject for a talk about conventions of proximity. Yet, it is all around us, and the question how to stage ways of grasping it in its vastness has informed a long history of practices of staging spectatorship and dramaturgies of proximity. This history of astronomy gains new relevance in the context of contemporary technological developments, including high-tech sensors that perceive things humans cannot, computers that process data in ways and at speeds humans cannot, and massive amounts of communication going on between machines in ways that remain imperceptible to humans. The contemporary phase of technogenesis—the co-evolution of humans and technology—foregrounds something that perhaps always has been the case but has now turned into a daily reality, and this is how human ways of experiencing and knowing the world, as well as the universe, take shape in a condition of immersion. This situation requires increased awareness of what Mark Hansen (Feed Forward) has termed ‘human implicatedness’: awareness of how human practices of doing and understanding are implicated within larger apparatuses and from within the universe that is also the object of experience and knowledge. This condition of implicatedness does not mean an end to agency but requires rethinking agency in line with Karen Barad’s (Meeting the Universe Halfway) posthuman understanding of agency as the correlate of enactment of the apparatuses in which we are implicated. Referring to historical examples from astronomy, as well as Eric Joris/CREW proposal for a 21st century planetarium, I will explore aspects of human implicateness and how they affect our understanding of agency, knowledge, and closeness and distance.| Period | 6 May 2016 |
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| Event title | Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | London, United KingdomShow on map |