2015 Thursday June 18 at 20h ~ Lecture by Brian Massumi: Virtual Ecology and the Question of Value
The event is FREE but places are limited, so booking is essential: dutchartinstitute@artez.nl
This talk explores the possibility of a theory of value that is radically non-normative and directly qualitative. Following the lead of French philosopher of science Raymond Ruyer and process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, it attempts to extrapolate a paradigm for a theory of value from a rethinking of the status of qualities of experience, using color as the prime example. The relations between value and abstraction, force, and potentiality are explored. The resulting theory suggests an immanent ethics: an ongoing process of valuation operating immanently to events of experience. But since events are understood as "including their own beyond" (Whitehead), the valuation is, in the words of Ruyer, immediately "transsubjective and transrelative." This brings the analysis into convergence with Félix Guattari's "transmonadism," or "virtual ecology."
Apart from this public lecture Brian Massumi will also be at the DAI for a closed seminar and some tutorials in the context of the project AFFECTIVE IMAGES: How Public Images Produce Affect In A Digital Age curated by Open!
Note: the public lecture will take place at The Showroom in Arnhem ( at less than one minute walking distance from the DAI-building in the Kortestraat).