20230721T101520230721T1315Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP88] Practicing thinking with new materialist theory: What animating storied objects can teach us100 % Onsite sessionAILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Practicing thinking with new materialist theory: What animating storied objects can teach us
Oral Presentation[SYMP88] Practicing thinking with new materialist theory: What animating storied objects can teach us10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 11:15:00 UTC
The workshop is inspired by new materialist and post-human perspectives on education and invites participants to reflect on research methodologies and pedagogical approaches engaging with new materialist thinking (Toohey et al., 2020). While the conceptual underpinnings of new materialist research often remain opaque and difficult to grasp for scholars and practitioners new to this field, this workshop attempts to provide a hands-on introduction to notions such as assemblage (agencement), (Deleuze/Guattari, 1987, Fox & Alldred, 2015), becoming, rhizome, de- / re-territorialisation, affect (Spinoza, 1985; Strom & Martin, 2013, Bangou et al., 2020) and intra-action (Barad, 2007). Working in small groups and with (material) objects and stop motion animation, we will explore the impact of materiality in an assemblage, including human and non-human parts, such as objects and technology in form of pieces of material equipment and a stop motion animation app.
The workshop will be divided into two parts, each session will be 1,5 h long. The first part can be chosen alone, or in combination with part two.
The first part is an exercise to explore the notion of 'assemblage' (agencement in French), exploring processes of assembling and arranging things by creating a display. Questions we will think about are: How do we make choices? How does lived experience and the materiality of objects inspire us, and how do they shape decisions we make? How do humans and objects collaborate in creating an assemblage? What do we learn from that process? The activity we propose includes fruit, storytelling, language work in different languages – depending on the repertoire of the participants – the assembling of material stuff, as well as the sharing and interweaving of storied life experiences. This part will be concluded by a discussion and feedback round on the activity, closing with some conceptual clarifications of key notions such as 'assemblage' and 'intra-action'.
Brief for participants :
1.Select one piece of fruit that appeals to you for whatever reason (one piece of fruit per participant) 2.Think of one word that you associate with your chosen piece of fruit – it can be a memory or an emotion. If possible, use a variety of languages and scripts available to participants within your group. Write it down on a post-it. 3.Share your thoughts with members of your group. 4.Create a display with your selected fruit with other members in your group. 5.Come up with a short story inspired by your fruit display. 6.Think of a title for your story. 7.Share your story with the other workshop participants.
Think about questions such as: How did I make my choice? What role played the storied materiality of objects in making these decisions? How did humans and objects collaborate in creating the assemblage? What did I learn from that process? How could it be useful in teaching?
The second part of the workshop (1,5 h long) is dedicated to animating this display using a smart phone and a stop motion animation app. We will use Stop Motion Studio which participants are invited to download on their phone before the workshop (We will work with the free version. There is also a paid version for 5.99€ which offers more options in terms of musique and sound effects. For the purpose of the workshop, the free version is fully sufficient). In this section of the workshop we will explore notions of affect – as the ability of bodies to affect other bodies – (Spinoza, 1985), and conceptual ideas such as becoming, the rhizome and again intra-action, as the joining of forces and collaboration between human and non-human elements, considered both as co-agentive entities in producing movement –a short animation film in our case. We will share our short films and feedback on the film production, discussing the possible impact of affect and the usefulness of the rhizome as a notion capturing the nature of the experienced process.
