Defining States. Mattering Differently. A Conversation with Brian Massumi and Erin Manning November 25, 2006

Defining States. Mattering Differently.
A Conversation with Brian Massumi and Erin Manning

A Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry Event

Saturday, November 25, 2006
2:00 – 4:00 pm
Rm 066, Architecture, Landscape and Design Building, U of T
230 College Street

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. Nation state. Rogue state. Natural state.
State of exception. State form. Head of state. Police state. State of grace.
State of mind. State variable. State of fear. State of emergency. Indeterminate
state. Nascent state. Static. State your point. Mental state. Emotional state.
Altered state. State jurisdiction. State of the union. State of affairs. State
your name. Stately. Statism. Subject of the statement. State your purpose.
Smattering. Grey matter. Anti-matter. Love matters. Matter and energy. Matter
and memory. Matter of principle. Reading matter. Matter of minutes. Matters of
the heart. Matter of course. Matter of opinion. For that matter. Money matters.
What does it matter? Mind over matter. Fecal matter. No matter what.
Matter-form. Matter of fact. Matter of habit. What’s the matter? Matter of life
and death.

“… the question is not how to elude the order-word but how to elude the
death-sentence it envelops, how to develop its power of escape.”

– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

What can be done in the face of states of domination that are able to thrive on
the assaults against them? Can we defy these states? Can we matter differently?
Join us for an intimate conversation around these questions with Brian Massumi
and Erin Manning.

Brian Massumi specializes in philosophy, media theory, and visual culture. He is
the author of Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation and A User’s
Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. His
translations from the French include Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A
Thousand Plateaus. He teaches in the Communication Department of the Université
de Montréal, where he directs the Workshop in Radical Empiricism.

Erin Manning is a philosopher, visual artist and dancer. She is assistant
professor in Studio Art and Film Studies at Concordia University and director
of The Sense Lab, an interdisciplinary research-creation laboratory. She is the
author of Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in
Canada and Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty.

About Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry
Collaborating with a diffuse network of activists, artists, and theorists,
Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry initiates events that inquire into the
new enclosures and creative pathways beyond them.

Contact
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