Nothing literally matters today. In the face of severe ecological and geopolitical crises\, materiality itself is deeply affected by nothingness and negativity: landscapes are riddled with holes and voids due to massive resource extraction\, mountains of waste pile up as negative matter\, glaciers shrink and become monuments of loss. Thus\, we are confronted with a multitude of material no‐things\, non‐places\, and non‐relations. What relations do we maintain with the the void\, the absent\, the forgotten and the vanished? Through which operations\, acts\, gestures\, and practices is something turned into nothing? How does nothing materialize in various media milieus like film\, literature\, and games? And what kind of hidden potentialities may lie in material nothingness? By proposing a material\, relational\, and operative view on nothing\, the conference ties in with recent media‐philosophical concepts like operative ontologies and anthropomediality and brings them into dialogue with interdisciplinary discussions around the negative turn recently announced in contemporary social\, geographical\, and media theory.
\n\nProgram
\nGRAMA Lounge\, University Library
Steubenstraß\;e 6
99423 Weimar
--- Thursday\, June 13 ---
\n14:00
Welcome and Introduction
14:15
Achim Landwehr (Universitä\;t Konstanz)
The Hole Story. How Otto von Guericke did get lost in time and what it tells us about the constitutive role of voids in modern European culture
15:15
Laura Moisi (Humboldt-Universitä\;t zu Berlin)
Designing Disappearance. Cultural and Affective Legacies of Disposal Architectures
16:15
Coffee Break
16:45
Lorenz Engell (Bauhaus-Universitä\;t Weimar)
Nothing to See\, Nothing to Do. Jarmusch\, Duras\, Jarman
18:30
Reception at Lichthauskino (Am Kirschberg 4)
20:00
Film Screening
Homo Sapiens
(Nikolaus Geyrhalter\, Ö\; 2016\, 94 min.)
--- Friday\, June 14 ---
10:00
Susie Scott (University of Sussex)
Navigating Negative Identity. Doing\, Being\, and Feeling Nothing as Meaningful Social Action
11:00
Christiane Voss (Bauhaus-Universitä\;t Weimar)
Neither nor/as well as. Reflections on Neutral Phenomena
12:00
Lunch Break
14:00
Kathrin Schuchmann (Universitä\;t zu Kö\;ln)
Spatial Relations and the Virtual. Christoph Ransmayr&rsquo\;s Literary Aesthetics of Absence
15:00
Mia Hallmanns (Universitä\;t Hamburg)
Landscape and an Aesthetics of the Void. Perspectives from Chinese Mountain‐Water‐Painting
16:00
Coffee Break
16:30
Dominik Schrey (Universitä\;t Siegen)
Loss Landscapes. Mapping Timelines of Glacial Disappearance
17:30
Rosetta S. Elkin (Pratt Institute New York)
Landscapes of Retreat
--- Saturday\, June 15 ---
10:00
Sulgi Lie (Bauhaus-Universitä\;t Weimar)
The Negative Camera. On Samuel Beckett&rsquo\;s &ldquo\;Film&rdquo\;
11:00
Toni Pape (Universitaet Amsterdam)
Nothing Happened. On Stealth Gameplay and the Becoming-imperceptible of Political Action
12:00
Coffee Break
12:30
Martin Siegler (Bauhaus-Universitä\;t Weimar)
Hollowcene. Media Philosophy of Negative Spaces
13:30
Lucas Pohl (Humboldt-Universitä\;t Berlin)
Nothing Will Have Taken Place. Negativity\, Space\, and the Apocalypse
14:30
Closing Discussion