As part of the fourth network meeting Media and the Senses of the network Dis-/Abilities and Digital Media, two lectures by Gili Hammer and Karin Harrasser will take place on Friday 13 May 2022 in Vienna on site and via Zoom (7:30pm-and 9:30pm).

 

Gili Hammer (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will speak about “Embodied translation across abilities: An anthropological perspective“ (on-site and Zoom)

Disability culture broadens our understanding of what it means to be human, teaching us that social equity includes a recognition and representation of the myriad ways and means of seeing, hearing, and moving. In this process, different sensory and physical skills and experiences are going through "embodied translation," engendering a dialogue among people who are different from each other. Dr. Gili Hammer will address these processes through examples from two ethnographic studies, focused on gender formation among blind women in Israel, and on integrated dance projects bringing together dancers with and without disabilities in Israel and the US, offering a view into the ways boundaries demarcating “us” from “them” can be negotiated in creative, artistic ways.

 

Karin Harrasser (Kunstuniversität Linz/IFK Wien) will hold a presentation about “In/capacity. Anthropology of the senses in question”

Anthropology of the senses in the enlightenment (that has been inherited by the philosophy of technology/media studies) has the tendency to a) conceive of sensory capabilities in quite essentialist terms: sensuality appears to be firmly rooted in the physiological apparatus, one sense is correlated with one specific organ. It b) has the tendency to stick with ideas of compensation: if one sense is missing/does not confirm to normative ideas of functioning, another sense will compensate it; this is c) connected with a whole set of problematic ethical and/or epistemic consequences concerning e.g. empathy or cognitive capabilities. I will question these assumptions by introducing a different model of in/capability that approaches perception in a much more open, even speculative way. What if we don't know (already) what sensing/perceiving/knowing is (about)?

 

Please register here for the Zoom talks. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the meeting.

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