Part of a series of readings/performative lectures by Abou Farman and Leonor Caraballo featuring tumors, shamans, insects, and hydrogen protons. How can we make sense of the afterlife beyond the limits of a secular frame? And how can the afterlife help us make senses - literally, as in cultivate new modalities of sensing? We will explore these questions through a notion of synaesthetics reformulated from Susan Buck Morss by way of MRIs, smells, sounds, and blindfolds.
The event will take place in the Anthropology Lounge, Schermerhorn Extension, room 465.
This event is organized by the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life and cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology. It is part of the Death and After series at IRCPL.
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Abou Farman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research. Professor Farman is interested in secularization processes, especially in relation to technology and aesthetics. His ethnographic research has focused on technoscientific projects in the US attempting to achieve physical immortality. He is working on a book, Secular Immortal, examining three such ‘immortalist’ strategies: cryonics, biogerontology and artificial intelligence. His first book was Clerks of the Passage, an extended essay on movement and immigration. He has taught Anthropology at Bard College, SUNY Purchase, Hunter College and Princeton. As part of the artist duo caraballo-farman he has exhibited internationally, including at the Tate Modern, London, and PS1, NY, and received several grants and awards, including Guggenheim and New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships.