Trigger Warnings, Embodied Vulnerability and Feminist Affects - Katariina Kyrölä - University of Turku

In the last few years, the language and politics of trigger warnings have spread all over the Internet and academic classrooms. Warnings about media content that may be upsetting, offensive or ‘triggering’ post-traumatic responses abound online and are increasingly demanded in educational contexts. Trigger warnings draw on the history of feminist media critique and have most commonly been linked to images and texts of sexual violence, sexist, racist or heterosexist subordination, and depictions of self-harm and eating disorders. The issue has unsurprisingly elicited heated debate especially among feminist, queer, crip and postcolonial scholars and activists, and views have become unproductively polarized into against-or-for camps, reminiscent in many ways of the ‘sex wars’ between pro- and anti-pornography feminists.

I examine these debates, asking how they both negotiate and generate experiences of embodied vulnerability, affects seen as more or less acceptable for feminists, and spaces perceived as safe or unsafe. Whose and what feelings matter and gather value in debates on trigger warnings? What kind of power lies in claiming that particular kinds of media images and texts unavoidably immerse subjects in self-disrupting affect and make some bodies vulnerable?

Affective Media Lab: Embodied Encounters - Francein Broekhuizen, Joshua Price & Poppy Wilde - Coventry University

The seminar Mediatized Affect and Embodiment seeks to explore the affective and embodied responses of attendees to different media outlets. The organisers will therefore be facilitating an Affective Media Lab that hosts a series of different media formats including gameplay, film footage, music, photographs, and text. Within an interactive and open environment participants will be able to encounter different examples of affective media both related and unrelated to the papers presented at the seminar. As a group we will then share our embodied experiences, and discuss the affective capacities of each format and content, and further discuss the nuances between how different formats enable us to feel in very visceral ways.

Fat pride and Fa(t)shion Blogs - Kaisu Hynnä - University of Turku

In the contemporary media environment fatness has become increasingly visible as a topic. Despite the usual understanding of fatness as a medical or an economic problem, popular culture has in the recent years seen a raising trend of media representations that encourage especially fat women to embrace their bodies. In 2010 in Finland, More to Love (Finland 2009–2013), a fashion blog held by two “fatbulous” women Peppi and Mimmi, received the title of the best fashion blog of the year. Although Peppi and Mimmi have since stopped updating their site, especially Mimmi’s new blog PlusMimmi (Finland 2013) has become popular among plus-size readers. This paper explores the way fat pride – an attitude where the fat body becomes a source of celebration rather than humiliation (Murray 2008, 106) – is negotiated in More to Love and PlusMimmi. Pride is understood as an affect with both biological and cultural aspects (see Ahmed 2004). The paper discusses the affective exchange between the writers and the followers of the blogs. How is fat pride produced and what role do coming-out-as-fat narratives play in the blogs?

The Embodied Film Narrative: Affect as a Tool for Moving Image Practice - Matthew Hawkins - Coventry University

This paper is the result of a research project, the aim of which was to explore new ways of approaching both the conceptualisation and the production of cinematic narratives through an understanding of affect, through a synergy of film theory and film practice. By combining theory and practice this research explores the concept of affective tonality and the role of the senses in producing a cinematic narrative. Through the integration and exploration of my own practice I research how theoretical and cultural discourses of narrative cinema are constrained by semiotic representation, psychoanalysis and textuality and how affective tonality, which embraces the physical, emotional and cognitive elements of film, enables non-textual possibilities to produce narrative.The concept of affective tonality has been used in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and provides an academic context to my research. This concept informs my production theoretically and enables me to consider the sensorial attributes of cinema in practice. My research includes Deleuzian theories of affect, which I extend to the experiential mood of cinematic narrative with a special focus on corporeality in the creative process.

The methods used in this research project have been brought to bare on several sociological and psychotherapeutic projects, which have employed visual methods including the Leverhulme Trust funded project Place, Culture, Film (Dyke, Rabikowska 2014), the Food Standards Scotland funded project In or Out: A Slice of what we Eat (Wills, 2015) and the Society of Clinical Psychiatrists funded project Blue (Hawkins, Rabikowska, forthcoming).