Sunday 9 December
INTIMACY SYMPOSIUM

Goldsmiths Ben Pimlott Lecture Theatre

9:30am till 10am
Registration and Coffee

audience by Rachel Gomme (UK)
audience is a one-to-one performance and CD project, based on the idea of creating a collection of individual recorded silences, and exploring silence as presence, engaged interaction and exchangeable commodity. It examines the intimacy of the interaction between two people sitting together in silence, and looks at the nature of silence, how we value it and to what extent an individual’s presence can be documented through a recording.
Goldsmiths Ben Pimlott Seminar Room, 9:30am till 12:30pm
This event is bookable at the venue, on the day.

[ not ] just because we're horny: spin-the-bottle [ & variations ] by Adam Overton (USA)
Spin-the-Bottle typically involves a group of participants standing or sitting together in a circle, with a side-lying, empty bottle on the ground at their epicentre. The bottle functions like the spinner for a standard boardgame, with its opening serving as the pointer. Join Overton to explore alternative or additional overlays that can be applied including bin-the-spottle, spin-the-bottle, hi-fi, I’’ll show you mine if you show me yours”, seven minutes in heaven, hopes, fears and dreams and sight for sore eyes.
Goldsmiths Ben Pimlott Foyer during Symposium Registration, Lunch and Coffee Breaks.

10am till 10:30am
Introduction to the Symposium by INTIMACY Co-directors Maria X and Rachel Zerihan

10:30am till 11:15am
Screen Eroticisms: Contrasting Intimacies in the work of Carolee Schneemann and Pipilotti Rist. Keynote by Prof. Amelia Jones.
This paper addresses a profound technological and ideological shift in the visualization and conceptualization of eroticism (as a mode of intimacy) from the 1960s to the 1990s through a comparative analysis of two major feminist screen-based projects: Carolee Schneemann's Fuses (1964-7) and Pipilotti Rist's Pickelporno (1992). By focusing on these two pieces, each produced by a key figure in the history of contemporary and feminist art, the essay seeks to cast light on three major and interrelated shifts in the following areas: feminist and broader social conceptions of eroticism and sexual agency; the articulation of a vital female erotic power through screen-based media (16mm film and video, respectively), each having its own potential to render the human subject differently; and artistic strategies for exploring the relationships among the body, the camera, the resultant screen image and space. Ultimately, by showing how each artist pushes technological capacities of each medium (film and video) to render different modes of female sexual agency, the essay will point to broad transformations in beliefs about identity and embodiment in the contemporary period.

11:15 till 1pm
Erotics of (Dis)Embodiment. Panel & Seminar Feedback.

Speakers:
Prof. Paul Sermon, Seminar Feedback. See (Dis)Embodiment Seminar

Dr. Dominic Johnson, Seminar Feedback. See Performance and Pornography Seminar.

Kelli Dipple, Workshop Feedback. See Intimacy and Recorded Presence Workshop.

Prof. Thecla Schiphorst

Ang Bartram: “Meeting Grounds and Collisions: boundaries, objects, actions, and spaces in-between”
The imposition of boundaries provides clarity for making decisions based on what can be considered culturally right or wrong. In life and art performative laws regimented by public consensus maintain such boundaries. For the artist the boundaries between art object and live event, object and audience, and gallery and non-gallery space have importance for communicating intent. Inhabiting the spaces in-between by transgressing the boundaries that divide and legislate creates a vibration to occur in how the work is mediated. This vibration is liminal and potent: it creates an intimate meeting space where meaning is understood without rules.
The ‘art/life gap’ (as Gunther Brus called it) is the driving force behind an artistic practice involved with abjection, intimate exchange, and the liminal. This practice uses the mouth as focus for bodily actions that make visible cultural margins through position. This illustrated paper offers an explanation of the complexities, anxieties and interests of a practice that relies on boundaries being violated.

Chair: Prof. Janis Jefferies

1pm till 2pm
Lunch Break

Cooking with Mama by Hiwa K. (Iraq/ Germany)
Cooking with Mama is a webcast event in which I am cooking with friends according to the instructions of my Mother, living in Iraq, who is giving them on a video messenger. The pattern is that she shows and tells what to do, I translate, then we follow her instructions and show the results of all phases of cooking for evaluation. I also introduce my friends to her and translate small conversations between her and my friends. Finally, we eat together.
Goldsmiths Ben Pimlott Seminar Rooms, 1pm till 2pm

2pm till 3:45pm
Radical Acts: The Politics of Intimacy. Panel and Seminar Feedback
Speakers:

Tracey Warr, Seminar Feedback. See At Risk Seminar.

Mine Kaylan, Seminar Feedback. See The Time it Takes to True Seminar.

Kira O'Reilly, Workshop Feedback. See Intimate Details Only Workshop.

Dr. Simon Jones: “De-Second-Naturing: Performance's Intimate Work in a World of Terror”
This paper will explore the current, often indirectly expressed anxiety in experimental performance over the re-emergence of geo-politics as a central issue in everyday life in western societies by positing a model of performance’s unique contribution to the contemporary debate – de-second-naturing. As a resistance to the re-assertion of terror as a grand narrative, performance will be described as a unique site within which personhood can be set against and alongside citizenhood, in a potentially radical face-to-face encounter. This model is predicated on performance as an interstices of in-betweens exposing the aporia between our senses, particularly hearing and seeing, and between our embodied and discursive practices and their relation to the everyday and its ongoing politicization. Furthermore, the fundamental intimacy of its eventness will be cited as the ground of performance’s challenge to geopolitical forces.

Jess Dobkin “The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar”
The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar is a performance art work I created inviting audiences to sample small quantities of human breast milk donated by six new mothers. The performance premièred in Toronto in July 2006. The performance came out of my own experience as a new mother, and an interest in cultural issues and taboos surrounding breast feeding. I wanted to invite a dialogue about this challenging and most intimate of motherhood rites.
The Lactation Station challenges a wide range of issues around intimacy, curiosity, social discomfort, and women’s bodies. The performance brought Health Canada into the discussion concerning the classification and regulation of breast milk, as human fluid and as a food product, and our social relationship to the substance. The performance takes a most intimate act of drinking someone’s bodily fluid, and disrupts the experience, challenging and transgressing our knowledge and comfort in relationship to bodies, biology and social practices.

Chair: Prof. Adrian Heathfield

3:45pm till 4:15pm
Coffee Break

4:15pm till 5:45pm
INTIMACY Open Forum
Chairs: Prof. Johannes Birringer & Prof. Lizbeth Goodman

I Miss You, Great to See you Again by Anaesthesia Associates (NZ)
A live audiovisual mashup of popular love songs and Hollywood romantic comedy films. The piece will occur simultaneously with the two members of the audiovisual duo performing from opposite sides of the planet. Daniel Agnihotri-Clark will manipulate audio live in front of a proximal audience in London, while Paul Bradley will mix video over the internet in real time from Wellington, New Zealand.
Ben Pimlott Seminar Rooms, 6pm till 6:30pm

Tickets: 14 GBP, concessions 9 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacysymposium.eventbrite.com
LIMITED CAPACITY

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Photography credit: Microdances. Photography, 2005. Copyright: Jaime del Val_REVERSO