Here’s some photos (and from Aarhus generally) from the two days. It was a fantastic workshop and a properly engaging one too. I think we all appreciated informally discussing the topic involved without having the pressure to develop 20 formal papers. The problem with the latter mode of production is almost like a “blogging in real-life” kind of thing – interesting people talking past one another. This was pushing each other to investigate concepts and ideas. The paper I wrote HERE was for a separate talk-event.

Soren and Olav’s strategy was great. As you can see from the pictures, we had to develop posters and speak casually about what we were interested in. Everyone else had sticky notes, and wrote down their own thoughts and stuck them up accordingly. It led to boxing off some of the key issues together and more focused conversation, in particular what kinds of materialism are we talking about when we discuss material? Marxist social production?, object material?, material as resistance?, final reality material? Not all of them can be combined as that would contradict the purpose of discussing material. So to was participation in an art context problematic (not least because I often think it creates poor anti-antagonistic art – however there are exceptions).

I met some great people, particularly Saul Albert and Thor Magnusson, both of whom I’m sure I’ll be working with / collaborating in the future.