Gifts/Presents/Presence – Meanings and Materialities
The transdisciplinary event Gifts/Presents/Presence – Meanings and materialities brings together scholars and artists around the ubiquitous yet ambiguous theme of the gift.
Among the subjects to be addressed, both scholarly and artistically, is the temporality of the gift – the fleeting dynamics of the present’s presence and absence – and the performance of the gift in different spatial frameworks and across diverse vibrant materialities.
The event opens with a three-day multidisciplinary conference, June 6-8, 2024 accompanied by an exhibition. The exhibition will continue until June 15.
Keynote speakers are Mark Graham, author of Anthropological Explorations in Queer Theory (2014); Margrit Shildrick, author of Visceral Protheses: Somatechnics and Posthuman Embodiment (2022) and Alexandra Urakova, author of Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2022).
The guest speakers are: biophilosopher Nina Lykke, sociologist Frederic Vandenberghe, historian Tracey Sowerby, and anthropologist Karsten Paerregaard.
The event is part of the research project funded by Kone Foundation.
Photo: A project workshop in Valssaamo / Niilo Rinne