We are thrilled to announce that the 2023 Asymmetry International Symposium will take place on Friday, 1 December. Following the successful launch of The Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series at the Courtauld Institute of Art earlier this year, this annual conference, titled Energies of Attachment: Mapping Intimacy across Art, Science, and Ecology, will be an important occasion and point of academic exchange aimed at expanding global dialogues and conversations surrounding the Sinophone landscape to wider audiences.
Intimacy, with its potential for mutual and nonnormative, asymmetrical yet affective relationships, channels profound energies to repair epistemological frictions in times of ecological crises. Beyond the interpersonal sphere, intimacy expands across multiple scales, encompassing geographic, terrestrial, and other-worldly dimensions, as well as the biotechnological, cybernetic, and microbial realms that shape our present-day climatic challenges. This one-day cross-disciplinary symposium gathers practitioners to explore the manifold possibilities of intimacy in addressing and tinkering with ecological ruptures. The symposium aims to elicit critical and imaginative responses to the following inquiries:
- How can we effectively map, narrate, and mediate intimacy across species, scales, and temporalities, spanning individual bodies and psyches, communities, environments, landscapes, and entire ecosystems?
- Can assemblages such as forests, soil, bodies of water, and more serve as conceptual frameworks, socio-cultural realities, and visionary ‘zones of familiarity’ that nurture entangled matters — biotic or abiotic, human and otherwise?
- How do we make sense of the mutability of intimacy regarding care and violence, conviviality and competition, mutualism and parasitism, within myriad ecological relations in general and in particular?
- Can artistic practices, creativity, critical thinking, and knowledge-making processes offer fresh insights into understanding intimacy within the intricate dynamics of ecological interconnectedness?
Organised by Dr Feixuan Xu (Asymmetry Postdoctoral Fellow, The Courtauld) and Dr Wenny Teo (Senior Lecturer, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Courtauld).