Following the successful launch of the Asymmetry 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, is 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?
Welcome
9.30–9.45am
Dr Feixuan Xu (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Keynote Lecture 1
9.45–10.45am
Eco Queer Intimacy, Dr Zheng Bo (City University of Hong Kong)
Break
10.45–11.00am
Panel A: Bonding with Land and Earth
11.00am–12.45pm
Chair: Dr Wenny Teo (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
- In the Distant Embrace of the Changbai Mountains: Drone as a Sentient Being, Mia Yu (Independent curator)
- From ‘Human Mine’ to ‘Energy Battle’: Extractivist Capitalism and Relationality in Post-Reform China, Dr Loretta Lou (Durham University)
- Soilkin: Relational Exercises with Soil and Stones, Dr Alexandra R. Toland (Bauhaus University Weimar)
Lunch
12.45–1.45pm
Panel B: Microbial, Vegetal and Animal Kin
1.45–3.30pm
Chair: Nick Yu (Asymmetry Art Foundation)
- Contemplating with Viruses, Pei-Ying Lin (Artist)
- Pious Intimacy, Dr Franklin Ginn (University of Bristol)
- Violent Intimacy: A Postcolonial Semiotics of Contamination in the Work of Jes Fan, Sophie Guo (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Full Programme
Break
3.30–3.50pm
Screening
3.50–4.10pm
羽化 (wings becoming), 2022, 6'20'', 16mm colour film, silent, Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien
Introduction by Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt (Asymmetry Art Foundation)
Keynote Lecture 2
4.15–5.15pm
Guddling About: An Intimate Artistic Practice with Rivers, Lakes, Drains, Puddles, Sewage Works, and Other Watery Bodies, Prof Minty Donald (University of Glasgow)
Closing Remark
5.15–5.30pm
Dr Feixuan Xu (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Wine Reception
till 7.00pm
Organised by Dr Feixuan Xu (Asymmetry Postdoctoral Fellow, The Courtauld) and Dr Wenny Teo (Senior Lecturer, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Courtauld).