10. Juni 2026, 17.00 Uhr Kunstuni Linz, Hauptplatz 8, 4020 Linz (Lecture Hall F - H8.05.03)
The Department of Cultural Studies invites you to a lecture from Bettina Wuttig (University of Marburg).
Against the backdrop of critiques of Cartesian Dualism formulated by sensory studies scholars and (feminist) phenomenologists, this lecture addresses the persistent myth of a divide between the inner and outer worlds, the private and public, and sensus and logos.
These bifurcations have fostered an ideal of deliberative and representational democratic interaction within institutions as disembodied. By pivoting radical democratic theories toward knowledge production in Soma Studies (Wuttig 2016; 2022) and Sensory Studies, and by focusing on critical ontological politics, this lecture invites us to reconceptualize democratic encounters in institutions as zones of affective, sensorial, energetic, and embodied transmissions (see also Seyfert 2011).
Thinking democratic interactions as multisensorial and embodied fosters more-than-human articulations and representations that have been excluded from logos-centric and anthropocentric democratic discourse. This lecture aims to locate the intelligible within the senses and the body: How do multisensorial and embodied approaches help identify the hierarchical (pre-)structuring of political fields? More specifically: How is the sensorial experience of (dis-)comfort articulated in non-semantic ways? Since (dis-)comfort points to hegemonic structures privileging certain groups over others (see Ranciere 2008), rendering these somatic expressions intelligible is crucial.
The rendering intelligible of somatic and affective expressions—such as smiling, holding one's breath, synchronization of movement, scratching, fleeing, trembling, or hee-hawing—which are sensed rather than cognized, may reveal the intertwining of the inner and outer worlds of democracy, reaching beyond the individual to the more-than-public.
Bettina Wuttig is a Professor at the Philipps-University of Marburg; she holds a chair in Psychology of Movement at the Department of Education; she is the founder of Soma Studies, an Area of Academic Study that explores somatic aspects of subjectivation and the entanglement of bodies and social hegemony. Her current research interests are: Theory of Radical Democracy in Respect to the Configuration of the Senses, Gender- and Disability Studies,Human-Machine-Interactions in Movement Practices, (Auto-)Ethnographic Movement and Dance Research, Body Psychotherapy.
All Date of the lecture series “The Senses in Performance”:
11. März 2026
Introduction by OLFAC – Silke Felber, Freda Fiala and Julia Ostwald
25. März 2026
320 GB im Rucksack – der physische Aspekt digitaler Kunst über Gletscher
Tina Frank (Visual Communication, University of Arts Linz) &
Alexis Dworsky (Media Design, University of Arts Linz)
15. April 2026
Dis_sensual – A crip choreographer’s re-distribution of the sensible
Michael Turinsky (Artist, Vienna)
22. April 2026
Performing Snakes in Modernity and Today
Nicole Haitzinger (Dance Studies, University of Salzburg) &
Christina Gillinger (Tanzquartier Vienna TQW)
29. April 2026
Lingering with Bass (2024, Steve McQueen)
Ulrike Hanstein (VALIE EXPORT Center, University of Arts Linz)
6. Mai 2026
Sinn für Unlösbares
bankleer – Karin Kasböck & Christoph Maria Leitner
13. Mai 2026
Mimi o Sumasu – the Very Act of Listening
Miya Yoshida (Artistic Research, University of Applied Arts Vienna)
20. Mai 2026
Tasting skin. On chilis and chills
Karin Harrasser (Cultural Studies, University of Arts Linz and Director of
ifk – International Research Center for Cultural Studies)
27. Mai 2026
Olfactory Violence and the Freedom to Speak: Stink Bombs in Interwar Europe
William Tullett (Early Modern History, University of York)
3. Juni 2026
Sensing the Atmospheres of Painters’ Studios in Nineteenth-Century France
Erika Wicky (Olfactions, Université Grenoble Alpes)
10. Juni 2026
Hee-Hawing Democracy: Somatic Articulations Beyond the Logos
Bettina Wuttig (University of Marburg)
17. Juni 2026
Greetings from the Swamp
Maria Nalbantova (Artist, Sofia)
24. Juni 2026
A loving ear – toward a poetic ecology of feeling
Brandon LaBelle (Independent Researcher, Berlin)