SPRING MEETING 2015 (31 March – 9 April) Katerina Kolozova | Eleni Ikoniadou | Ray Brassier
Submitted by Valentina Desideri on Tue, 2015-01-27 18:50
For the 5th edition of Spring Meeting PAF invites you as one of the up to 100 participants. As usually PAF has invited three speakers that are asked to talk for five hours three days consecutively. This is a format that has shown equally challenging for the speaker and the audience, as it is both in- and outside of conventional seminar structure. Speakers have developed very different approach to the format and it is inspiring to experience how the format seem to emancipate knowledge as the amount and diversity of information tend to transgress the possibility to say “Do you understand?”.
Over the years Spring Meeting has been visited by a number of contemporary thinkers with a focus on speculative thinking, object oriented and materialist philosophy next to addressing Deleuze, Whitehead and in general aesthetics. The 2014 e.g. edition included Reza Negarestani, Stephen Zepke and Isabelle Stengers, an amazing experiencing where Negarestani’s neo-rationalism made surprising connections to Zepke’s engagement with Kantian aesthetics together creating a generous entry point to Stengers’ three days on Whitehead spoken over a long and exciting life in philosophy.
Previous Spring Meetings and other sessions at PAF has featured by among others Tristan Garcia, Steven Shaviro, Ben Woodard, Nina Power, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Pete Wolfendale, Luciana Parisi, Sadie Plant, Red Vaughan Tremmel, Stefano Harney, Randy Martin next to curators and art critics such as Aaron Schuster, Raimundas Maulasauskas, Simon Sheikh.
The situation at PAF is fairly simple. 15 hours that the speaker can prepare as they desire. 15.00 - 20.00 is our timetable and we most of all want these sessions to be as exciting for the speaker as it is for us. Can we all be, so to say on thin ice and try something out together? The speaker starts from where their thinking is today or perhaps a survey over their time in philosophy, an introduction to, or a question that takes 15 hours to answer, or maybe the speaker experiences PAF as a permission to talk about things not otherwise “allowed”, or why not think through association rather than structure. It’s all up to the speaker.
The only restrictions we have are; no images or video, no tasks and certainly no working groups. It is important for us to engage in exchange through listening and talking, and we are very good in asking questions that require very long answers.
For Spring Meeting PAF wish to apply a classical sense of academy and dwell in knowledge through a frontal asymmetrical format. This is possible, not only because the seminar is offered for free but more so because of the special context spending nine full days with up to a 100 participants sharing meals, endless discussion in the garden and long nightly sessions.
This year PAF presents three extremely exciting thinkers with rather different background yet connected through their philosophical rigor and fearless approach.
Katerina Kolozova is professor in philosophy at Skopje University specializing in among other things relations between identity and materialism, e.g. engaging in Francois Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy in order to re-envision Judith Butler’s non-unitary subject. Her recent book “Cut Of The Real” remixes strata in contemporary philosophy and critical theory that has previously been kept apart, approaching specific questions around universalism. Katerina Kolozova’s contribution will also introduce the foundations of Francois Laruelle’s philosophy.
Ray Brassier, who also have engaged with Laruelle’s non-philosophy is professor at the American University Beirut Brassier is one of our times most radical philosophers and he has been a defining thinker for the recent materialist tradition not least through his remorseless “Nihil Unbound” (2007), the Anglo-Saxon showdown with correlationism and meaningfulness. Brassier’s work pushes nihilism to its ultimate conclusion and there is where we will take off, hopefully gaining insight into his upcoming publication “That Which Is Not”. He has further taken strong positions, not seldom directly skeptical, in relation to e.g. speculative realism and accelerationism.
Eleni Ikoniadou is a Senior Lecturer in Media in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University and has a PhD from University of East London. Her research is situated in the intersection between sonic theory and philosophy with a particular interest in time. Ikoniadou’s approach is rooted in Deleuze’s philosophy but is also affiliated with e.g. Brian Massumi’s work on affect. In her recent book The Rhythmic Event she furthers her investigations on hypersonic sensation and the non-human in human perception. The Rhythmic Even has been described as a deep plunge into an aesthetics of experience expanded into pattern, perception and time, and onwards into an abstract viscerality. Her research in rhythm implies forms of explaining networked societies. Rhythm becoming an interface between humans and machines, between distributed minds and overlapping mediascapes where the expanded universe of digital rhythm invites mutations across networks. Ikoniadou is a crucial guide to the dark chambers of contemporary experience.
Apart from the seminar it is up to the participants to together engage and cross- fertilize activities, interests, process and production from yoga practices to reading groups, from individual rehearsals to communal dance practices and showings, and to produce the Spring Meeting we want. PAF is open to the widest range of proposals and it is up to us to produce a curriculum, a daily routine and a politics of life.
During Spring Meeting our chefs will provide meals three times per day, habitually, as you all know, as much as they produce magic it’s all an adventure (as usually the kitchen is open for informal collaborations, individual initiatives and help).
During Spring Meeting participation in meals are binding. The total costs per participant is 35€ per day (18€ per bed/room and 17€ for three meals including wine and coffee). PAF membership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons and is valid for one year. The total fee for the 9 days Spring Meeting is 327€ including membership.
PAF has a limited capacity, it is therefore advisable to reserve early. The last two years the Spring Meeting has been very well attended, PAF therefore democratically accommodate participants in shared rooms. Couples and friendship is naturally respected. Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com
For Spring Meeting PAF can only accept reservations for the entire period.
Please don’t hesitate to ask further questions contactpaf@gmail.com
