Deleuze, G. (2007) For Félix. In: Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Here’s a plug for a session I’m co-convening at the next AAG in New York, in February. I really should have posted about this sooner as the deadline for the call for papers deadline is today, 15 September. If you are interested in doing something then please drop me a line.

For Félix: Transversal Geographies

CFP – AAG, 2012; New York, 24th – 28th February

Convenors: JD Dewsbury (University of Bristol), Thomas Jellis (University of Oxford), Joe Gerlach (University of Oxford)

“I believe I am neither an intellectual nor a revolutionary. I’m just pursuing something I started long ago” (Guattari, 2009a: 177)

“Just as an artist borrows from his precursors and contemporaries the traits which suit him, I invite those who read me to take or reject my concepts freely” (Guattari, 1995: 12)

Pierre-Félix Guattari (1930-1992) in a familiar self-deprecating gesture declared himself an ‘idea-thief’ (Guattari, 2009a: 23), yet it would be misplaced to regard his theoretical, and practical, work as straightforward appropriation. Instead, Guattari, through his ‘visionary cartography’ (Berardi, 2008), was incessantly productive in the cultivation of transversalising ideas: concepts and folding-points of inflection that segue into thinking, writing, becoming and doing differently. Recent newly constituted editions of his writings (Guattari, 2009a; 2009b; 2011; forthcoming; Guattari and Rolnik, 2008) – primarily though Semiotext(e) – attest to the growing interest and demand for translations of his work. Moreover, Guattari has come to be appreciated across a number of disciplines, not just in philosophy (Holmes, 2009; Stengers, 2010) but also in sociology (Genosko, 2002) and cultural studies (Grossberg, 2010; Murphie, 2004), in what has been described as the ‘Guattari Effect’ (see Alliez and Querrien, 2008; Alliez and Goffey, 2011). However, Guattari has received only muted attention in geography (Katz, 1996; Dewsbury, 2000; McCormack, 2003; 2005; Saldanha, 2010), and his work is often conflated with, or occluded by notorious collaborations. Nonetheless, in this session we hope to encourage a sustained engagement with Guattari’s ideas, exploring how they might resonate with contemporary issues in geography, and, as a result, open up our practices towards alternative ways of making connections between science-society-ethics-aesthetics-politics.

Specifically, we welcome papers attending to:

- therapeutic spaces

- eco-logic and ecosophical approaches

- diagramming and the diagrammatic

- schizoanalytic cartographies

- autonomist movements and collective assemblages of enunciation

- modelling and modelisation

- micropolitics; minoritarian and molecular revolutions

- ethico-aesthetics, and the proto-aesthetic

- refrains, ritornellos and habit

Experimentality: Experimental Subjects, Lancaster University

The week before last (14-15 January),  I made the trip up to Lancaster University for a conference on ‘Experimental Subjects’, part of the current Ex?erimenta!ity series.

Experimentality is a year-long collaborative exploration of ideas and practices of experimentation in science and technology, the arts, commerce, politics, popular culture, everyday life, and the natural world. Participants in a series of linked events will use the notion of the experiment to explore vital questions about the relationship between knowledge and power, freedom and control in the modern world.¹

I missed a few of the earlier conferences as I was out of the country but took the chance to attend whilst I am ‘between’ field-sites. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people were present at the event – somewhere between 30 and 40 – and the papers/presentations were interesting, if varied. Some of the highlights included an exploration of different sorts of experimentation (experimenta fructifera and experimenta lucifera) by Bronislaw Szersynski, who later went on to argue that experiments create the conditions for the emergence of an event. He drew on Giorgio Agamben’s work at times, which is something I have not really engaged in (yet)… In the same session, although not presenting, Adrian MacKenzie was keen to focus on experience: where is the experiment experienced? Are there sites of intensified experience? Unfortunately, these questions were elided.

On the Friday there was a fascinating talk by Lisa Blackman who was interested in practices of experimentation as forms of experimental stagecraft and was perhaps the only speaker at the conference who engaged with affect (as an aside, she mentioned a forthcoming special issue of ‘Body & Society’ which tries to grapple with affect). She made reference to Stengers’ concern with ‘risky’ research: allowing questions to be re-qualified as the research unfolds.²

Perhaps most fascinating, for me, was the talk by Neal White. I have been in contact with Neal by email for several months so it was really good to meet up and chat. I am exploring the possibilities of working with him as part of my series of fieldwork sites/interventions/moments. Interested in the work of Trevor Paglen (who may have coined the phrase ‘Experimental Geography’) and fresh from a recent collaboration with the UCL Geography Department on a project (‘Dark Places’), Neal is no stranger to geography. However, the main reason I got in touch was because Neal is the founder and coordinator of the ‘Office of Experiments’:

An intermittent institution dedicated to experiments, experimental knowledge and intuitive logic. THE OFFICE OF EXPERIMENTS aim is to respond to or create a context for the production and display of materials, practices and events in which the experimental element is paramount, if not rationalised, as art.³

Drawing on Rheinberger (1997), White argues that experimentation, as a machine for making the future, has to bring about unexpected events. He is interested in the relation between experimentation and events, whilst not reducing it to ‘spectacle’ (arguing that most people expect spectacle rather than participation). His concerns are not dissimilar to mine: to problematise the subject/object relationship; to question the roles of viewer and artist; and to re-examine the space(s) in which experiments can take place. We are hoping to continue our conversation in early February.

There was time at the end of the two-day conference for a round-table discussion which raised some important themes, and asked ‘Why experiment, and why now?’ Tellingly, the texts that were most often referred to were far from recent⁴.  Indeed, when looking for one of the books since returning from the conference, I stumbled across a review of it which noted that:

One of the most interesting and important trends in the history and philosophy of science has been the recent work on experiment. Most philosophy of science, and sometimes even history of science, either neglects experiments – how they are done and what role they play – or treats their results as unproblematical. Peter Galison’s How Experiments End is a major contribution to the growing body of work that is correcting that view.⁵

It makes me wonder what happened to that body of work, as it seems to be rarely referenced. Perhaps I have just been looking in the wrong direction! On a slightly different, another thing that struck me was that the students who were helping out were wearing lab-coats. I wondered why they were rehearsing a particularly scientific notion of experimentation. Perhaps it was mildly subversive that social-scientists were claiming the right to experiment but I thought it was a missed opportunity.

The next conference in the series will be ‘Experimental Objects’ on 18-19 February.

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Royal Geographical Society, London

Only just back from Cologne and about to head off for another conference. I haven’t really had chance to reflect much on the trip since returning, although I rather wish I had presented something (anything). As it turned out, at one session the speakers nearly didn’t show, for a session on Deleuze & Ethnography, and I was half-ready to give an impromptu talk with Joe…

On Tuesday I shall be travelling to Manchester for the  Royal Geographical Society’s (RGS-IBG) annual international conference; this year the theme is ‘Geography, Knowledge and Society’. The online programme looks great and I’m particularly excited that one whole day is devoted to ‘Art and Geographical Knowledge’.

Art and Geographical Knowledge explores the relationship between geography and art

A look at recent publications, conference programs and exhibition titles indicates the growing scope of the inter-relationship between art and geography. As the works in the exhibition and under discussion in the papers makes clear, this relationship between geography and artistic practice has a long history and takes a range of forms as boundaries between geographers, artists and curators blur. Bringing together critics, collaborators, creators and curators the aim is to explore the scope, methods and potential of art as a form of geographical knowledge.

It’ll be a good chance to meet geographers (and artists, or anybody else for that matter) who are working in a similar area to myself. Other potential highlights include a paper by Sarah Whatmore, Andrew Barry and Bruno Latour, as well as a session on ‘Urban Imaginaries’. I shan’t be speaking at this event either but I do hope to be this time next year!

[The photo was taken earlier on in the year, when I visited the RGS for the inaugural Doreen Massey lecture]

CONNECTdeleuze conference, Cologne

Just sitting in the Philosophy Department at Cologne University as I write this report from a conference on Deleuze , appropriately called CONNECTdeleuze. Joe mentioned the trip on his blog (Vernacular Mappings), and so here we are.

Now at the half-way point – it’s a three-day conference – the talks have been of variable quality but there is a sense of optimism and energy about the gathering. Although we were not registered properly (resulting in our names not being included on the poster, and no name badges!), we have managed to speak with some very influential figures in the broad field of Deleuze studies, including but not limited to: Brian Massumi and Erin Manning. Exciting! Expect another post when I have access to the net again…