I International Workshop "Time and Its Images"
Time, Image and Biopolitics

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

21st -22nd February 2013

State of the question: The twentieth Century has seen how some of the most acknowledged philosophers devoted their deepest reflections to the question of time: in Phenomenology, Bergson and Husserl; in Existentialism, Heidegger, Sartre and Lévinas; in analytic philosophy, Russell and Mellor. However, after such efforts, we still wonder what time is and how it affects our lives and culture. A quick view over some current disciplines gives us an account of these plural and contradictory conceptions and uses of time. In cinema and literature studies dominates powerfully a narrative conception of time, very influenced by French semiologists and later by Ricoeur's Temps et recit. Also in sociology, the concept of social and personal identity finds nowadays a narrative ground (i. e. Kenneth Gergen, 1996). Sociologists, in parallel with psychologists (Piaget) and cognitive psychologists (i.e. Hoerl and McCormack, 2001) state that time is plural and that it can be experienced differently only when the story is understood. In our everyday lives, the control and manipulation of time has some dominant models: our economic and social life is governed by a strongly organized objective structure of time, which is imposed by ways of accelerating our daily experiences (Virilio, 2006; Mary Ann Doane, 1995); political power on historical memory fully restricts the potentiality of new ways of understanding memory and history (Benjamin, Agamben), since our modes of attention and distention (entertainment) can be organised institutionally (Peter Osborne, 2008). In opposition to this conception, a very significant part of contemporary art since half a century ago confronts itself with time producing non-narrative, or rather anti-narrative, temporal experiences (see for instance the volume Heterocronías. Tiempo, arte y arqueologías del presente, 2008). And in mass-media the manipulation of time is used as an information and epistemic tool, that we seem to have naturally accepted already (Nichols, 2006; Capdevila, 2012).

Goal: It is not only scientifically important to meet specialists from different disciplines to discuss whether there can be established some common points among these conceptions and uses of time. It is also ethically and politically urgent to understand deeply how some models of time determine human beings in western cultures. The annual series of workshops on "The Time and its Images" starting this year 2012 endeavours to bring an unpretentious, but critical and interdisciplinary, contribution to this important issue. In this wide horizon contemporary art can play one of the main roles, taking into account its capacity to reflect on the immediate sensual and conceptual human life.

The main topics called for the first workshop are: the nature of time and how it constructs the subjectivity through its articulation of art and culture. It is also important to stress that this point has significant consequences in the theory of politics and culture. A second source of themes related to the first can be called the 'simulacra of temporalities', with which we mean by this notion all of the socially and politically imposed usages of time. Some of them come from mass-media and have epistemic implications; some others are imposed by the economic system; some others, by cultural or religious rituals; all of them, however, define a social order and determine individual lives from the outside. Finally, art will have an important presence in this series of workshops, since on the one hand, it can bring a privileged, non-interested, knowledge of culture and society and, on the other hand, can offer new and original models of experiencing time, that is, new and original models of human experience.

For the success of the project, it is necessary that the workshop gathers international and interdisciplinary academics as well as current artists, all of who have special interest and worked on/with the topic. All of the bellow related researchers and artists fully satisfy this condition.

We are sure this workshop could be of interest of academics and postgraduate students in Humanities, Visual Culture and Cinema, artists and other people interested in art and contemporary culture. We will invite the students of the Master Estudis comparatius en Literatura, Art i Pensament and could also be opened to PEI (Macba) students.

(Note: all the speakers have accepted the invitation. However, a delay with the Ministerial founding for research could force some cancellations).

Entitats col·laboradores:

• Departament d'Humanitats UPF
• Institut Universitari de Cultura UPF
• Projecte de recerca del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FFI2012-32614. "Experiencia estética e investigación artística: aspectos cognitivos del arte contemporáneo"

Programme

Thursday February the 21st. Location: UPF . Sala de graus Albert Calsamiglia (40.035)

15h Presentation: Antonio Luna, Head of Departament of Humanities (UPF) and Estela Ocampo (Head of the Institut Universitari de Cultura)

15:30h Dr. Charlie Gere, Lancaster University, Instant, Repetition, Media .

17:00 h Dr. Silvia De Bianchi, Technische Universität Dortmund, Time in between Physics and Philosophy: Is a World without Change Possible?

18h Break

18:30h Dr. Pol Capdevila, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Paradoxical Experiences of Time in Art.

20h Dinner

Friday February the 22nd. Location: UPF. Room. 23.103 (Edifici Mercè Rodoreda)

10h Dr. Kathrin Braun, University of Hannover, Modernity, Biopolitics and Temporality.
From historicity to the end of time as we knew it?

11:15h Break

11:45h Dr. Enrique Luque, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Tiempo y narrativa: El punto de vista de los antropólogos.

12:45h Dr. Ivan Pintor (UPF), Supervivencias y migraciones del gesto. Imagen y temporalidad a través de Aby Warburg

14:00h Lunch break

16:00h Dr. Hannelore Paflik-Huber, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Now permanently. Time in the contemporary Art

17:15h Carles Sora. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Haptic Time in Interactive Image.

18:15h Martí Ansón, artist. Aesthetics of Failure / Art Against Time.

Break

19:30h Round Table. Conclusions. Jordi Ibáñez (UPF), Pol Capdevila (UPF)     

There will be given 30 minutes to read the paper and 30 more to discuss it with the audience. The last session is a round table, with presentations and final discussion.

Més informació a: http://timeandimages.wordpress.com/