尤物视频

With SCA Professor Judy Radul, SCA PhD Candidate David Biddle, and Guests
March 10 鈥� April 22, 2025 | 12:30 PM (mingle), 1:00 PM (start)
Room 4390 鈥� SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Interdisciplinarity, so much discussed these days, is not about confronting already constituted disciplines (none of which, in fact, is willing to let itself go). To do something interdisciplinary, it鈥檚 not sufficient to choose a 鈥渟ubject鈥� (a theme) and gather around it two or three sciences. Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object, that belongs to no one.

鈥� Roland Barthes, "Young Researchers," Communications, 1972

All SFU graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and friends are welcome to join us for a free series of in-person and via Zoom talks and discussions exploring the notion of interdisciplinarity 鈥� and more! All events will be recorded on audio, which will be shared online here later.  

To RSVP and to have access to suggested readings, please email David Biddle at david_biddle@sfu.ca.

Presented with support from the and .

March 10.  Episode 1: Other Places to Start

With guest SCA Associate Professor Raymond Boisjoly, we consider starting points outside of and parallel to the European lineages informing the delineations of art and cultural practice at the University. We touch on Marcel Maus 鈥渢otal social phenomenon鈥� and Michael Taussig鈥檚 recent writing on 鈥淢astery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown,鈥� and ponder on contextual understandings of art, culture, law, medicine, history, from indigenous perspectives.

March 17. Episode 2: How did we get disciplined?

With our guest (Profesor, UBC's Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies), we work through the work of Friedrich Kittler, and consider how notions of disciplinarity are linked to changes in late 18th century early data-processing protocols Questions arise in regard to what the formative relationship may be between producing subjects of a discipline and readers of texts, on the one hand, and modern soldiers, on the other.  

March 24. Episode 3: We never were disciplined, pre-post-medium by way of genesis and metamorphosis.

With our guest (via Zoom), we will discuss the ideas of Gilbert Simondon and consider Malaspina鈥檚 ongoing research and recent essay, 鈥淚nvention and Metamorphosis Intelligence, Automated Optimization (AO) and the Prospect of Synthetic Intelligence with Simondon and Denizhan,鈥� in light of our questions about disciplines 鈥� how they individuate in their milieu, how they become 鈥渋nter,鈥� and if there is any room for an 鈥渋nter鈥� with Synthetic Intelligence.  

March 31. Episode 4 : Making Incomplete Sense Episode 4 鈥� POSTPONED! A NEW DATE WILL BE ANNOUNCED

We talk with SFU School of Communication Assistant Professor Stephanie Dick, who is an historian of mathematics, computing, and the mind. We will discuss her new research considering mid-20th century logicians who found themselves reaching for Jungian and even occult theories of mind in order to help them make sense of the implications of the 鈥渋ncompleteness鈥� and 鈥渄ecision problem鈥� results of the 1930s.  In their experiments, Kurt G枚del, Alan Turing, and others demonstrated that formal systems had significant limitations, and they began to muse about what implications that those limitations had for the human mind. We鈥檒l also go lateral to consider connections between scientific and artistic disciplines. 

April 3. Episode 5: Constraint and Causality (note: this is a Thursday, and will be in Room 2205) 

With guest Alicia Juarrero, author of (2023) we consider 鈥渂oundaries鈥� and 鈥渙bstacles鈥� (think of disciplinary divisions) as generative causalities called 鈥渃onstraints.鈥� Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrero challenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects and enable the emergence of coherence.

April 7. Episode 6: Symptom and Cause

Our guest will be Dr. , a founding member of the Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR) and a fellow at the Orient-Institut Beirut, whose  research spans the fields of Aesthetic Theory, Critical Theory, Visual Arts, Art Theory, Media Theory, and Cultural Studies, with a special focus on the thought of Walter Benjamin. We will focus on his recent essay, "." In this session, our abstract questions of category and cause will be concretized in a more explicitly political arena as we consider not only constructions of singularity, but also the production of ethics as a closed system: the "ethical transcendence of the politics of revolution and counterrevolution" in the form of liberal Human Rights Discourse as critically framed by Robert Meister and extrapolated by Khatib in relation to Palestine as "symptom and cause."

April 14. Episode 7: Wynter and Epistemic Rupture

With guest Professor Bedour Alagraa, Sylvia Wynter scholar and author of the forthcoming from Duke Press. Through Alagraa's research we will consider what happens when questions and practices of discipline and inter discipline are brought together with the thought of Sylvia Wynter on language, Blackness, and being human as praxis. 

Wednesday, April 16. Episode 9: Mastery of Non Mastery

With our guest, Professor Michael Taussig (via Zoom), we will consider the provocations of his 2020 book

 (b 1940) "is an anthropologist known for his provocative ethnographic studies and unconventional style as an academic...His work contributed to an increasing mistrust of cultural analyses from the perspective of the dominant culture, i.e. Western capitalist culture." 1. His work engages on some of the same mimetic registers he observes and articulates. Taussig has taught in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and in Performance Studies at New York University, and is emeritus professor of anthropology at Columbia University. The titles of his many books, give a glimpse of the way his work has crossed disciplinary boundaries and experimented with thought, writing, drawing and theatre. 

Michael Taussig is the author of the following books: Corpse Magic: Echoes Active in the Slayer-Slain Nexus (2025), And the Garden Is You Essays on Fieldwork, Writingwork, and Readingwork (2024), Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown (2020), The Corn Wolf (2015), Occupy :Three Inquiries in Disobedience (2013), Beauty and the Beast (2012), What Color is the Sacred? (2009), Walter Benjamin鈥檚 Grave (2006), My Cocaine Museum (2004), Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in a Colombian Town (2003), Defacement (1999), Magic of the State (1997), Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (1993), The Nervous System (1992), Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (1987), and The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980).

April 22. Episode 8: Polycrisis and Polymorphs, How Do New Disciplines Emerge? 

With our guest Prof. , Director of the , where she is also an affiliate artist-researcher, and a member of the Advisory Board of .

Program in Process! Please check back for updates!

To be rescheduled, new date to be announced for the following:   

Episode 4: Making Incomplete Sense 

We talk with SFU School of Communication Assistant Professor Stephanie Dick, who is an historian of mathematics, computing, and the mind. We will discuss her new research considering mid-20th century logicians who found themselves reaching for Jungian and even occult theories of mind in order to help them make sense of the implications of the 鈥渋ncompleteness鈥� and 鈥渄ecision problem鈥� results of the 1930s.  In their experiments, Kurt G枚del, Alan Turing, and others demonstrated that formal systems had significant limitations, and they began to muse about what implications that those limitations had for the human mind. We鈥檒l also go lateral to consider connections between scientific and artistic disciplines and the effect of computing as a substrate of so much artistic production.