DARE 2015: the dark precursor

1st international conference on
Deleuze and Artistic REsearch

Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium
9 – 11 November 2015

call for proposals venues day 1 day 2 day 3 ongoing in absence

Gent Lightning 20140609 2.55am © 2014 Pieter Lozie

Pieter Lozie, ‘Gent Lightning 20140609 2.55am’, from Lighting, Rainbow, 2014. Courtesy of © 2014 Pieter Lozie. All rights reserved.

La foudre éclate entre intensités différentes, mais elle est précédée par un “précurseur sombre,” invisible, insensible, qui en détermine à l’avance le chemin renversé, comme en creux. De même, tout système contient son précurseur sombre qui assure la communication des séries de bordure.
—Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition. Paris: PUF 1968, 156

Thunderbolts explode between different intensities, but they are preceded by an invisible, imperceptible dark precursor, which determines their path in advance but in reverse, as though intagliated. Likewise, every system contains its dark precursor which ensures the communication of peripheral series.
—Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition. London: Continuum 1994, 119

call for proposals

The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and/or Félix Guattari has become increasingly relevant to the field of artistic research. It acts as a key reference for many artist-researchers, who engage with knowledge across academic and non-academic fields of practice. At the same time, the term artistic research remains suspended in its definition in order to highlight immanent modes of knowledge creation. The extent and depth of Deleuze and/or Guattari’s influence on this emerging field is largely unchartered, nor has their philosophy been evaluated from the perspective of artists who work at the borders of philosophy. DARE 2015 is the first international conference entirely dedicated to the relation between artistic research and Deleuze and/or Guattari’s philosophy, and welcomes both artistic presentations and scholarly papers that investigate this relation.

Art plays a crucial role in the philosophy of Deleuze. He dedicated a substantial part of his oeuvre to literature, theater, painting, cinema and music. Importantly, he understood art as a mode of thinking, irreducible to and imbricated with philosophy and science. Like art, philosophy and science are both creative practices; and like philosophy and science, art is research in the sense of continued experimentation and infinite learning. Moreover, and independently of his writings on the arts, Deleuze created philosophical concepts that are open to different kinds of reflections and appropriations by artists and artist-researchers.

Choosing as its title the concept of ‘dark precursor,’ the conference reflects the duality and openness inherent to artistic research. Deleuze appropriated this expression from meteorology, where it designates a stage in a cloud-to-ground lightning sequence. The stepped leader, as the dark precursor is technically referred to, develops when the charge separation within a stormy cloud is so strong that the surrounding air is ionized and becomes conductive (plasma). Thus, a charge transfer ensues from the top of the cloud to its base, and from there, a flow of negative charges begins making its way towards the ground. Along the path that now connects the cloud and the ground, a much stronger flow of positive charges travels freely from the ground upwards, generating heat. In one thousandth of a second, the air surrounding the return stroke becomes five times hotter than the sun surface and the incandescence produces the brilliant flash we see of the lightning.

The notion of the dark precursor concerns the question of how a communication between heterogeneous systems, ‘of couplings and resonance,’ occurs without being predetermined. In relation to artistic research we ask how to compose these resonances, how to create new couplings that are not accidental but rigorous and at the same time indeterminate. How to create in the midst of a primordial difference?

We encourage artist-researchers and scholars to experiment with all modes of presentation and to submit outlines in all areas of interference between Deleuze and/or Guattari’s philosophy with artistic research. For instance, presentations may address questions about the creative act in artistic practices and trans-disciplinary research (music, film, painting, writing, new media, etc.); the genesis of forms and processes of individuation (dark precursor, diagram, abstract machine, assemblage, haecceity, fold, etc.); the production, validation and dissemination of knowledge in artistic research (dramatisation, experimentation, metamodeling, rhizomatics, schizoanalysis, etc.); styles of thinking (image of thought, form, sign, utterance, code, etc.); the ethico-aesthetic paradigm and its politics, subjectification and universes of value (becoming-x, habit, life, nomadism, double capture, micropolitics, resistance, etc.)

In line with the theme of the ‘dark precursor’, we are particularly interested in receiving proposals for scholarly and artistic presentations that exceed simple interpretations and representations of either Deleuze and/or Guattari’s philosophy or an artistic practice at hand.

DARE 2015 welcomes presentations ranging from academic to artistic in modalities, including performative, collaborative, interactive, visual, new media, installations etc. Proposals, written either in English or French, should be submitted through the conference online submission system.  Scholarly presentations are limited to 30 minutes including Q&A, while duration and form of artistic presentations will be considered case by case.

To submit your outline of presentation, please visit: dare2015.exordo.com and follow the simple on-screen instructions provided (you will be required to setup an account first). The outlines should not exceed 500 words and include the title, followed by not more than five keywords. Artist-researchers should include a physical description of the artistic presentation they propose, specifying for instance, the number of people involved, its dimensions and duration, materials, technical requirements, etc. The outlines may be supplemented, uploading separate files to ‘Ex Ordo’. The attached files should:

  • not exceed 5 in number
  • not exceed 2GB each in size
  • be in any of the following file formats:
    • Images: PDF, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG
    • Audio: WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3
    • Video: AVI, QuickTime, MP4
  • be clearly named after the submitting author and their sequence number from 1 to 5. For example: LASTNAME_Firstname_1.pdf
  • be listed by file name in the text of the submission

A short list of references may be attached as PDF, preferably formatted in Chicago Referencing Style.

The closing date for submissions is Wednesday, 1 July 2015 (extended).

After the submissions are closed, the Editorial Board will peer-review submissions and notify authors by Friday, 17 July 2015.

Accepted authors are kindly requested to promptly confirm their participation and submit by Tuesday, 1 September 2015 a final version of their outline of presentation and short CV, that will be published on the DARE 2015 website alongside the conference programme. Requirements for each presentation are negotiated with individual authors at this stage.

All accepted abstracts will be published open-access on the conference website and presentations at DARE 2015 will be video recorded for documenting and archiving purposes. A publication of the conference proceedings is in planning.

venues

De Bijloke Muzic Centre

Jozef Kluyskensstraat 2
9000 Ghent, BELGIUM

Phone +32 (0)9 233 68 78
Email info [AT] debijloke.be 
Web debijloke.be

The conference starts at De Bijloke and continues in this venue until the end of the concert Outlandish on day 2.

Orpheus Institute

Korte Meer 12
9000 Ghent, BELGIUM

Phone +32 (0)9 330 40 81
Email info [AT] orpheusinstituut.be
Web orpheusinstituut.be

The conference is at the Orpheus Institute from day 1 afternoon until the closing reception.

Sphinx Cinema

St. Michielshelling 3
9000 Gent, BELGIUM

Phone +32 (0)9 225 60 86
Email info [AT] sphinx-cinema.be
Web sphinx-cinema.be

The conference is at Sphinx only during the morning of day 3.

programme of day 1

Monday, 9 November 2015

 

De Bijloke Music Centre

Entrance
  • 8:30 – 9:30
    Registrations, tea & coffee
Kraakhuis
Auditorium
Mezzanine
Bibliotheek
Rotonde
Foyer
Concerthall

Orpheus Institute

Concert Hall
Auditorium
Dining Hall
  • 20:30 – 22:30
    Conference dinner

programme of day 2

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

 

De Bijloke Music Centre

Kraakhuis
Auditorium
Mezzanine
Bibliotheek
  • 16:30 – 18:30
    Dialogue II: On Visual Art or How Does Art Think?
    With: Kamini Vellodi (chair), Éric Alliez, Ian Buchanan, Marc Ngui, Anne Sauvagnargues, Peter Stamer
  • 18:30 – 20:30
    Encounters with: Marc Ngui, Sean Crossley and Beau Deurwaader, Lucia D’Errico, Einar Einarsson, Marina Kassianidou, Eleni Kolliopoulou, Federica Pallaver, Silvia Pereira, Michael Schwab, Mhairi Vari, Elisabet Yanagisawa and Gillian Wylde
Rotonde
Foyer
Concert Hall

Orpheus Institute

Concert Hall
Auditorium
Penthouse

programme of day 3

Wednesday, 11 November 2015

 

Sphinx Cinema

Screen 3

Orpheus Institute

Concert Hall
Auditorium
Penthouse
Dining Hall

ongoing

De Bijloke Music Centre

(day 1 and  2)

Foyer
Bibliotheek

Orpheus Institute

Penthouse
Red Room
Entrance/Cellar

in absence

Elizabeth de Freitas, Mathematical Monsters and the Continuum

Fabrice Raffin, La pensée nomade: un processus d’innovation artistique

Angelika Seppi, Eventum tantum: On the Paradoxes of Sense, Dark Precursors, Quasi-causes, and the Excessive Rest

Eleanor Stubley, Maintenant: Seeing the Untouchable, Touching the Unseen

Nina Stuhldreher, The Last Frontier of (Un)consciousness and the Arts: On Neurodiversity and Artistic Thinking in Times of Self-Observation, Evolution’s Most Recent “Killer App”

The conveners of DARE 2015 have received funding from the European Research Council under the European’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 313419.