[Air-L] Strange/r/ness: Intimacies in Uncanny Worlds - online, 3-6 June 2024

[Sarah Merry]

A series of events presented by the Postdigital Intimacies research
cluster in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University.

Register at: STRANGE/R/NESS: Intimacies in Uncanny Worlds (eventsforce.net)
<https://www.eventsforce.net/cugroup/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=521339&eventID=1868&traceRedir=2>

Join us for a week-long series of online events (3rd-6th June)
exploring what is uncanny, strange, and ‘other’ in relation to today’s
digital, and postdigital, intimacies. The talks in this event take as
their starting point the current context of our seemingly
‘post’-Covid-19 reintegration and disintegration, and the apparent
return to ‘normal’ after a prolonged period of deep digitalisation,
not to mention the ways in which the digital has come to mediate and,
at times, regulate, our most intimate lives, with regard to work,
health, relationships, domestic space, and more. We explore, in this
context, the expansion of technological surveillance capitalism,
disinformation and misinformation shaping how we feel and engage in
the world, how make sense of our bodies, and (dis)connect with others,
and the ways in which these encounters are simultaneously strange and
familiar. Indeed, current questions over notions of truth, agency, and
authenticity are, in today’s postdigital cultures, just as likely to
lead to violence, polarisation, and the annihilation of marginalised
people.

Following both Lauren Berlant and Shaka McGlotten then, we use
“intimacies” in a (post)digital context to denote “contacts and
encounters, from the ephemeral to the enduring, made possible by
digital and networked means” and as a “vast assemblage of ideologies,
institutional sites, and diverse sets of material and semiotic
practices that exerts normative pressures on large and small bodies,
lives, and worlds” (McGlotten, 2013; 7).

The speakers in this series reflect on the uncanny and familiar in
such postdigital intimacies. Collectively, we ask how these contexts
generate and, at times, unravel intimacies, as relationalities,
connectivities, and networks, that emerge in and through humans,
events, technologies, animals, objects, and emotions. In doing so, we
start from the assumption that intimacy itself must be thought about
differently to take account of the messiness and ambiguities of these
connections.

*Digital intimacies and the Queer Geographies of Encounter
*Dr Regan Koch, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Director of the
City Centre, Queen Mary University of London, UK*3rd June, 4-5.30pm
BST
*Intimacy often refers to deeply personal desires and attachments. It
is  generally understood to be a private matter that is nonetheless
governed  by social conventions and heterosexual norms. However, as
Lauren Berlant (1998, 282) highlighted, the ‘inwardness’ of intimacy
comes with a  corresponding publicness – an aspiration for something
shared, even if  largely unspoken: “Intimacy builds worlds; it creates
spaces and usurps  places meant for other kinds of relation.” Queer
theory emerged, in part, as an orientation towards this kind of
world-building. It identifies and affirms relationships and spaces
that break with convention, foregrounding LGBTQ+ experiences in an
aspiration to create wider publics where desires and sexualities are
emancipated from oppressive norms and structures. Berlant’s work did
this in part by extending the very notion of intimacy, understanding
it not simply as romance or sex, but as a wider epistemology for
thinking about social connection. Over the past decade, the ways
intimacy is pursued and practised have been radically reshaped by
digital technologies. New kinds of devices, software and platforms
have brought novel forms of encounter for sex, dating, friendship,
entertainment and sharing resources (Koch & Miles, 2021). LBGTQ+
communities are often at the forefront of such changes, driven by the
necessity of being marginalised or excluded from the typical spaces of
intimacy, and in pursuit of the pleasures and affordances it can
bring. In this talk, I will reflect critically reflect upon these new
technologically mediated worlds to examine new, queer geographies of
encounter which deserve exploration given their far-reaching
implications for LGBTQ+ lives and wider society.


*Under Cover of Niceness: Deepening White Supremacy through Wellness,
Crypto & Hyper Segregation
*Dr Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology, Hunter College, USA*4th
June, 4-5.30pm BST
*The conventional way of understanding white supremacy is one that
relies on a lens of Othering extremists as incomprehensible miscreants
to ordinary, “nice” people. Contrary to this, I explore the way the
very idea of “niceness” serves as a kind of cover, a Trojan Horse if
you will, for the political and social goals of white supremacy often
in very gendered ways. In wellness culture, often dominated by white
women, there are repeated efforts to eliminate social inequality from
view by focusing on “light and love” inside often all-white spaces
like yoga studios and retreat centers. In the world of
cryptocurrencies, often dominated by white men, there are repeated
claims that moving away from central banking (controlled by
“globalists” an antisemitic dog whistle) will solve the world’s
problems from a supposedly colorblind vantage point that relies only
on math, configured here as “nice” rather than overtly political. The
endpoint of both wellness and crypto is hyper segregation in
geographic space, whether through gated communities or apartheid
states.

*Who am I without the things that are familiar to me?
*Zea Asis, artist and author of “Strange Intimacies”*5th June, 11am-12.30pm BST
*In this talk, Asis reflects on her own process writing the zine
Strange Intimacies during the pandemic, which she collaborated on with
two other artists.  As Asis’ first book of essays, Strange Intimacies
is about a young woman's coming-of-age in the Philippines as bound to
the necessity of movement, physical, emotional and intellectual, which
becomes the impetus for the constant discovery of selves, past and
present. Subtitled “Essays on dressing up and consumption,” Asis
writes “this is what it means to be ontologically insecure: To live
life as if already dead, or in the cusp of it. It is a time we’re
forced to evaluate, ‘Who am I without the things that are familiar to
me?’ and grapple with the unsteadiness that comes from the drudging
perpetual reconciliation of things that once were and how they ought
to be now.” Through acts of consumption and romantic interludes,
across thrift spaces, office spaces, and streets, Asis captures a
womanhood that refuses romanticism, and instead revels in the
interweaving of grit and grace necessary for contemporary survival.
Asis will speak also to her own experience we as a zine maker in the
Philippines, thinking through the 'strange' as it applies to how
writers and publishers have created their own paths, outside of
mainstream avenues of publishing, to reach their audience and create a
circular community of readers, artists, and writers.


*Vanishing Act - An Ethnography of Digitalization and the
Disappearance of Printed News*
Dr Anne Kaun, Professor of Media and Communication Studies, Department
of Media and Communication Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden*6th
June, 10-11.30am BST
*This presentation engages with digitalization through the lens of
disappearance, challenging the prevailing narrative of digital
emergence and transformation. Guided by Jean Baudrillard's idea that
concepts emerge when things begin to vanish, the study focuses on the
disappearance of printed newspapers as a case study. There are two
main aims: first, to ethnographically document the decade-long shift
in news delivery from the perspectives of readers and producers;
second, to theoretically understand the role of disappearance in the
digitalization process, exploring how experiences of loss shape the
emerging media landscape. The research questions delve into the
experiences of newspaper distributors, producers, and readers in the
face of disappearing print media, as well as the influence of this
disappearance on new distribution formats and media practices. The
presentation contributes to journalism studies by addressing the
overlooked aspect of newspapers’ materiality and distribution shifts.
Additionally, it adds to the literature on the role of technology for
social and cultural change by exploring loss and disappearance
alongside emergence. Methodologically, the presentation builds on
material gathered through ethnographic methods to study industry
shifts and audience experiences. The aim is to nuance the
understanding of the interplay between disappearance and emergence in
the digitalization process.


Register at STRANGE/R/NESS: Intimacies in Uncanny Worlds
(eventsforce.net)
<https://www.eventsforce.net/cugroup/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=521339&eventID=1868&traceRedir=2>


*Dr Sarah Kate Merry **(she/her)**  |  Research Fellow*

Centre for Postdigital Cultures
<https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/postdigital-cultures/>
 |  Research Cluster : Postdigital Intimacies

Coventry University

@drmerry30 <http://www.twitter.com/drmerry30>