Summary

Between 28 and 30 March 2012, ASCA held its Annual Workshop and Conference at the University of Amsterdam. This year’s workshop concentrated on crossing conventional perceptions of 'closeness' and 'slowness' in order to explore the cultural, political, and aesthetic values associated with fast versus slow, and close versus far. Some of the questions touched upon during the different discussions at the workshop included: why value closeness in some cases, and prefer speed in others? How intimate can we get, as researchers or artists, to the object being analysed? How does 'the bigger picture' transform our notions of the close and the distant? And to what extent do technologies and media affect relationships to space and identity? By bridging the gap between distance, closeness, speed and slowness, the ASCA conference challenged this nominally implicit system of opposites.

One of the focuses of the ASCA Workshop and Conference 2012 was set on bringing together academic papers and artistic projects. The programme included panel presentations, film screenings, artist talks and an exhibition display at the Vondelbunker. Some of the keynote speakers who contributed to the Workshop in exciting and sometimes unexpected ways included the Shakespeare scholar and performance theorist Bryan Reynolds, and cultural activist Hilary Ramsden.

For a video-documentation on the exhibition and film contributions, please see the link below.

Organising committee 

• Alexandra Brown

• Asli Ozgen-Tuncer

• Birkan Tas

• Blandine Joret

• Margaret Tali

• Pedram Dibazar 

Contact details

For more information about the ‘Marx and the Aesthetic’ conference, please contact:

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
Spuistraat 210 (room 113)
1012 VT Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Email: asca-fgw@uva.nl