On Integrative Objects

A Philo-Fiction workshop/symposium with Anne-Françoise Schmid.

This event is connected to the annual PLASMA speaker series at the Department of Media Study and will host François Laruelle and Anne-Françoise Schmid, who will both give talks on April 10th, as a special edition of the PLASMA series.

Anne-Francoise Schmid will lead a practice-based workshop On Integrative Objects as an emerging method for research and practice with grad students in a collaborative and casual setting. The workshop is part of a full-day research event with presentations, a collaborative and casual laboratory rather than formal conference presentation-style setting. Experimental, performative and embodied research practices welcome.

Participants’ work will also be part of the subsequent exhibition, On Integrative Objects, showcasing the work created and presented during the workshop/symposium day. Work will be on display at the Department of Media Study in the project room, Center for the Arts, Room 271, from April 14-27.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Anne-Françoise Schmid, with assistance from François Laruelle, asks us to explore Integrative Objects in this philo-fiction workshop. What are integrative objects? They are not directly apprehensible, so we cannot decide immediately if an object is or is not integrative. It is not a question of ontology, but a methodological quest. These objects are a device to understand new ones, objects that are no longer synthesizable. They are objects, but the principle of their unity is lost. It is not a question of uncertainty, but more fundamentally, it is about the status of our knowledge: philosophical, scientific, or artistic.

We will set out to gain traction on their concept of philo-fiction, participating collectively in the practices that engage with this specialized posture of research and the common understanding of “integrative objects” (Schmid). The integrative object puts the link between the architectonic, fiction, and a point of externality. The concepts of ‘myth’ and ‘philo-fiction’ will be explored to make visible what they call ‘platforms’ of the scientific creation-condition.

Fiction is not simply a story, it is an operator distinct from those of philosophical perspectives or worldviews, as well as a method of setting assumptions. There is philosophy, which gives rise to endless stories, but we can construct a fiction that is a kind of new rigor. Fiction mobilizes knowledge other than that which was made about its use. Philo-fictional work is exterior to the limits of philosophy; an experimental mode of fiction that changes the practice of philosophy. Rather than a methodology, philo-fiction is an operative practice. Its operators: fiction, the generic and the future. Operators neutralize, to expand and implement the generic knowledge with respect to the disciplines ‘processed.’

Ultimately, this workshop encourages experiments in collective-intimacy as we put into practice these ideas, generating fictions for a future generic epistemology.

Sponsored by The Department of Media Study, the Department of Philosophy, the Embodied Research in the Arts and Sciences Research Group, The Department of Romance Language and Literatures, and the Media Study Graduate Student Association.