Workshop und Vortrag mit Christoph Brunner am 24. und 25. Februar 2020

Im Rahmen einer Veranstaltungsreihe der Faculty of Culture + Community ('Emily Carr University of Art + Design'), Vancouver

»Encounters on Aesthetic Commoning«
Prof. Dr. Christoph Brunner | CAC Critical Practitioner in Residence, Spring 2020**

This three-part exploration of the aesthetics of commoning practices, activist sense, and institutional narratives at Emily Carr University of Art + Design is part of the Critical Practitioner in Residence programme at the Faculty of Culture + Community launched in Fall 2017. It aims to galvanize critical thinking, making, and acting at our university through culture-shifting and community-building. This iteration of the residency is enabled by the Canada Council of the Arts and the generous hospitality of the Novacek family.

Workshop | Hapticality in the Undercommons
Date/Time: February 24, 2020, 18.00-20.00h
Place: Emily Carr University, 520 E 1st Ave, BC V5T 0H2, Vancouver, Boardroom D2315

This text-based discussion session revolves around a collective reading of Stefano Harney’s “Hapticality in the Undercommons, or from Operations Management to Black Ops” (see reading below). By relating two artworks—the practice of South African performance artist Athi-Patra Ruga and Yellow Patch, a film by photographer and filmmaker Zarina Bhimji (see resources below)—Harney proposes different temporalities and rhythms that resist capitalist capture. Through our collective exercise, we will investigate what constitutes sense, what activation and activism as resistance against hegemonic sensuous regimes mean, and how to common in light of these questions.

Reading + Resources:
Stefano Harney – Hapticality in the Undercommons, or from Operations Management to Black Ops
Athi-Patra Ruga – A Glimpse of Utopia
The Bass Presents: Athi-Patra Ruga
Zarina Bhimji – Yellow Patch (click ‘View Film’ to open player)

Workshop | »Replay and Relay: Modes of Extractivism and Knowledge Capture«
Date/Time: February 25, 2020, 18.00-20.00h
Place: Emily Carr University, 520 E 1st Ave, BC V5T 0H2, Vancouver, Boardroom D2315

While art schools and institutions of higher education are places that allow for esoteric practices to maintain relevance beyond immediate application and economic value, they are far from resisting the lures of value extraction. Let’s inspect the underbelly of how capitalism harnesses and exploits the production of knowledge through even well-intentioned inclusion strategies, community outreach, and participatory research at universities.
This session invites everyone to bring a concern, experience, or expression of these modes of extraction (e.g., a piece of or excerpt from creative or analytical writing, a static or moving image, a clip from an animation or documentary). We will take the time to listen, sense and be with these situations, towards fabulating and confabulating beyond the immediate impulse of making sense.

Lecture | »Activist Sense and Modes of Organizing«
Date/Time: February 26, 2020, 11.30-12.50h
Place: Emily Carr University, 520 E 1st Ave, BC V5T 0H2, Vancouver, Reliance Theatre A1060

Questions of how to build transversal alliances beyond solidified identities while maintaining a certain edge define one of the key challenges for practices of commoning and their political potential. In this session, Christoph Brunner will outline preliminary thoughts and practices of activist sense by drawing on his long-term engagement with SenseLab —a laboratory for thought in motion in Montreal—and the initiation of the ArchipelagoLab for Transversal Practices at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany. Extending what a lab might be and how to undermine institutionalizing impulses, questions of organizing as a commoning practice will enter the conversation through considering the alternative international media center FC/MC during the 2017 G20-summit in Hamburg.