Public Workshop: Rahel Spöhrer - Haptic Academia
Kunstraum, 4 pm
13. Nov
Universities are known as environments hostile to the body and affect with a primary focus on cognitive, rational, and critical thought. They are also sites of disciplinary power, inequalities, discrimination, and abuse. At the same time, the bodies that move through these institutions experience their constitution through the skin: the negation of the body becomes a tactile experience within that very institution.
Against the backdrop of this ambivalent reality, the workshop Haptic Academia examines the tactile encounters that shape everyday life on campus. Following a written conversation between Laura U. Marks, who researches and writes about haptic relations, and Rahel Spöhrer, participants are invited to rethink and renarrate campus life from the place of the body, affect and touch.
In short readings, walks, and a series of writing exercises, participants will explore what the university, dedicated to the production and transfer of knowledge, is and becomes when we consider the touchy aspects of this environment, and attend possible modes of responding to and ultimately resisting the tactile hostility of the Institution.
This public workshop is part of the exhibition The Professor’s Body. On Academic Affect and Habitus with Leda Bourgogne and event program with Franzis Kabisch, Ho Rui An, Rahel Spoerer and Maximiliane Baumgartner from 23.10.2024 - 27.11.2024.