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Textural Sensemaking

Textural Sensemaking Lecture + Workshop | Sha Xin Wei

29 January 2025 | Dundee Scotland | Energy – A Philosophy of Practice

Lecture: Textural Sensemaking (16:30 – 18:00 UK time)

Lightning… distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish itself from it. (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition 28)

What opens up when we shift from a logic of objects and predicates to operators, transformations, contingency and open-ended development; from experiencing in terms of form and substance to enacting “the force that thru the green fuse…”; from a priori atoms and egos to topological distributions and other modes of contingent textural subjectivation?  Drawing from elementary notions such as wú (無), líubái (留白), as well as non-discrete topology,  I will propose some consequences for a textural approach to the emergence of sense, with practical consequences for the arts of conditioning occasions, such as architecture and theater.

Workshop: Hapticality (12:00 – 16:00 UK time)

We create through structured improvisation energetic understandings of hapticality – feeling the world through others, and develop capacities for, as Erik Bordeleau put it, “perceiving a world peopled not with things but with forces, not with subjects but with powers, not with bodies but with bonds.”  The workshop will require no prior experience in movement or somatic arts, simply a willingness to comfortably engage in individual and collective activities using everyday movement, and to sense relational, energetic dynamics.  We will supply viewings and readings to orient the exploration and seed discussion.  Reference: Augusto Boal, Games for Actors and Non-actors.