22.7.09

Transatlantic Media Conference - May 2009



Here is another place where Serres's work showed up in an academic conference. In this case it was called Media Theory on the Move: Transatlantic Perspectives on Media and Mediation. Flow, movement, the interaction of many elements, prepositions as the "pimps of language" can all be found in proximity to these themes. Here is the a post-conference summary paragraph of the particular session:

To conclude this rather intensive day of transatlantic flows, Peter Bexte (Cologne) tackled the issue of the movement of things by drawing on Michel Serres’ philosophie des prépositions. Following Serres, Bexte studied things in their connectedness and interrelationality. He supported this argument by drawing on Samuel Beckett’s ‘Quad I + II‘. Quad I and Quad II are two experimental teleplays made in the 1980s for the Süddeutsche Rundfunk. These television performances involve a play with the closed-circuit movement patterns of four actors, in which each actor moves according to precise and exact mathematical ‘rules’. Beckett’s mathematic choreography generates a degree of continuity, circularity and infinity. Or what Bexte has described as a ‘nothingness of something’. For Bexte, we need to reflect on and trace our linkages with media by which we are intertwined with mediated environments. Though his position on the symbiotic mutuality of relations does provide the means to understand the in-betweenness of media and mediatization, it however does not acknowledge violence and noise. It neglects that connectivity and disparity are two sides of the same coin.

21.7.09

Serres Interview - FNAC



Thanks to Stephanie Posthumus at McMaster University for pointing out this interview. It is in French - good practice for French learners like me and a more direct access to Serres for those of you who are fortunate in your fluency.

14.7.09

Vampires, Angels and other Parasite/Messengers

Here is a very worthwhile posting on a Vienna Vampire conference. It was an academic gathering with far greater depth than the pop-culture material that is so prevalent. One of the presenters featured Serres's Angels: A Modern Myth and it would have been great to have heard it. The themes of parasitism and of existence in some kind of in-between state are intriguing to think about within the space of vampires and their social/cultural place in our landscape. Reading the entry reminded me of watching a black and white film called Nosferatu while on a flight to California.