On the possibility of planetary intimacy

Through a set of shared readings we will sink our teeth into the notion of “intimacy” and some of the various questions and problems it poses. The point is of course not arrive at a definition that we (or anyone else) would be satisfied with but, to examine the context of the FieldPlatform / Plataforma­Campo project, which tentatively proposes and experiments with the composition of ‘planetary intimacies’ between and amongst Europe and South America, Medellín and Basel. The session will allow guests and researchers to think aloud a bit about the knowable and unknowable, possible and impossible, relations that overcode globalism, mobility, media and sociality through some very different texts where the term “intimacy” appears prominently but also evokes rather different (but interrelated) notions, conceptions of this term, as they also stride the global, the planetary, the social, the historical, and beyond.

This session is a public forum as part of the FieldPlatform / Plataforma­Campo workshop sessions through the week of May 30th at the Critical Media Lab. The following texts will be reviewed and discussed in the morning, starting from 10:30 AM:

• Lauren Berlant’s “Intimacy: A Special Issue”
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• Georges Bataille, “The Bourgeois World”, in The Accursed Share. An Essay on General Economy.
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• Lisa Lowe, “The Intimacies of Four Continents”
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• Julio Cortázar’s “The Distances” (those Spanish-speaking would be better off reading the original)
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