Prelude Panel
The Prelude Panel of PSi #17 invites you to rethink with us aspects of performance and performativity, together with: Hosts: Maaike Bleeker & Iris van der Tuin. Speakers: Brian Rotman (respondent: Nicolas Salazar-Sutil); Alva Noë (respondent: Bojana Cvejic); Michal Kobialka (respondent: Iris van der Tuin); Jon McKenzie (respondent: Rosi Braidotti). The Prelude Panel will take place on Wednesday, May 25, from 12.00–17.00 (before the Festive opening) in the Blauwe Zaal, Stadsschouwburg Utrecht.
Selected events
Festive opening
To kick-start PSi #17 registrated PSi visitors are cordially invited to join in the festive opening of Camillo 2.0 at the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht, featuring a speech by the Mayor of Utrecht (Aleid Wolfsen), followed by a welcome from the current president of PSi (Edward Scheer), and conference organiser Maaike Bleeker. Afterwards, they will be treated to food and drinks, offered by the Cabinet of the Mayor of Utrecht, the Board of the Faculty of Humanities (Utrecht University) and the Vrede van Utrecht/Treaty of Utrecht.
Plenary lecture Mieke Bal:
Motors of the Mind: Madness as Memory Machine
Fascinated as we are, today, with machines that “have” memory, and thus enable us to store ideas, thoughts, images and even feelings, it may seem almost quaint to talk about memory as the motor of individual human life. If a machine is an automaton, working without the volition of human beings, and memory the recall of past events and situations, talking about memory machines might also come dangerously close to de-humanizing people. It seems quite mad to rely on machines for memory. Is it possible to argue that madness is, in fact, a machine that generates memories?
Plenary lecture Jane Taylor:
Thresholds of Being: Horizons of Knowing
“Everyone is orthodox to himself”
– John Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
This paper considers radical discontinuity and the imperiled Self. Much of the argument will be located within Reformation and Counter-Reformation philosophical and aesthetic experiments, to construct a hermeneutic instrument for analyzing the processes of self-narration and constitutive performance that sustain Individual Identity during eras of epistemic rupture.
