Rootlessness is approached as a defining condition of the present, alongside an examination of how digital infrastructures organise and circulate emotion within contemporary political life.
10:30–11:00
Mirna Belina, Sonic Acts
Introduction and Welcome
11:00–12:00
Yuk Hui
The Standpoint of Heimatlosigkeit and the Planet
Lecture
12:00–12:30
Yuk Hui in conversation with Hugo Esquinca
12:30–13:15
Flavia Dzodan
Affective Logistics
Lecture and Q&A
Moderated by Hugo Esquinca
Philosopher Yuk Hui presents his lecture The Standpoint of Heimatlosigkeit and the Planet. Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, it has become impossible to comprehend the world solely through the lens of Hegel’s Berlin or Kojève’s Paris – even as nation-states continue to wrestle with their growing obsolescence. The planetary condition of human existence has also intensified a form of nihilism rooted in modernity: geographically through globalisation, and cosmically through thermodynamics. If, in the twentieth century, reactionary politics sought to 'overcome modernity' by returning to a notion of homeland (Heimat), the twenty-first century calls for a renewed framework – one that begins, perhaps, from the standpoint of Heimatlosigkeit (homelessness).
Writer and theorist Flavia Dzodan presents Affective Logistics, a research project examining how computational infrastructures precondition, capture, and route emotion as logistical matter. Tracing genealogies from military command systems to domestic technologies of optimisation, she reveals how contemporary architectures turn affect into data for circulation and control. Through writing, video, and sound, Dzodan treats latency not as error, but as a critical residue – a signal of deferred presence that speaks to diasporic experience and to forms of feeling that cannot be fully measured or contained.
Yuk Hui and Flavia Dzodan's presentations will each be followed by a Q&A moderated by Hugo Esquinca.
Important notes for Symposium visitors
– With a Symposium ticket, visitors also have access to the Stedelijk Museum and its exhibitions for the entire day.
– To ensure a smooth check-in process, please arrive at least 15 minutes before the Symposium begins. Personal items such as backpacks and bags must be stored in the museum cloakroom, located in the basement.
– Laptops and tablets may be brought into the Symposium room if carried by hand or placed in a transparent bag.
Yuk Hui’s lecture is realised as part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. Flavia Dzodan’s lecture is realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of the same funding scheme.
