Of Affect
Kent State University, Kent, OH | October 23—25, 2025
www.architectureandfilm.org
SYMPOSIUM CHAIRS
Jon Yoder, PhD., Kent State University
Vahid Vahdat, PhD., Washington State University
Theories of atmosphere, when understood as affect, may sometimes focus on “transpersonal intensity,” while others stress “environment, or the transmission of the other’s feeling.” Still others account for atmosphere as “qualified aura,” “tone,” and “waves of sentiment” or, finally consider it “more broadly a sense of place.” A common thread among these definitions is a relational modality, for as atmospheres continually form and dissolve, manifest and disappear, they affect bodies and the bodies of things that enter into relation with one another. Always in the emergent process of transformation, they exceed the assemblage of the living bodies from which they emanate and traverse divisions between people, things, and spaces.
—Guiliana Bruno, Atmospheres of Projection (2022)
Architecture and film are famous for their affinities. For starters, both fields are incredibly complex. Buildings and films can both take years to complete, and their production teams sometimes consist of hundreds of people. Both fields also often focus on worldmaking. Indeed, the best buildings and films both routinely construct challenging new visual and spatial experiences and environments. Despite countless cross-disciplinary exchanges, however, scholarship on architecture and film has tended to operate in only two main areas: depictions of buildings and cities in films, and influences of filmic logics and techniques on the design of buildings.
Instead, this symposium solicits emerging research that explores notions of affect in architecture and film. Like other cultural spheres including fashion, food, and music, architecture and film are increasingly expected to elicit emotional and sensorial, affective responses. Ambient and atmospheric approaches abound. And the boundaries among aesthetics, politics, cultures, and technologies have never been blurrier in both fields. For this biennial event, symposium organizers define “affect” broadly. We seek a diverse range of cross-disciplinary paper submissions and session proposals that challenge traditional relationships between architecture and film. All voices are welcome, and researchers from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
Of Affect invites paper proposals and experimental (short) film/video submissions on a wide range of topics in architecture and film, such as:
- Bodies, genders, and affect
- Ambient images and other post-linguistic paradigms
- Motions and emotions
- Atmospheres of color, light, and/or sound
- Artificial (affective) intelligences
- Sense and cinesthesia: post-phenomenological perceptions
- Urban and post-urban ambiences
- Affective utopias, dystopias, and/or heterotopias
- Empathy and other inter-subjective engagements
- Decolonizing the senses
- Screen-based reflections on surface finishes
- Magic hour: the beauty (and horror) of shadows
- Animating affect
- Science fictions and other speculative fabulations
- Realisms: dirty and/or speculative
- Synthetic landscapes
Participants are encouraged to submit their research and creative work in the following formats:
1- Papers
2- Short Film/Video
3- Pecha Kucha
See descriptions of each submission opportunity here.
REGISTRATION
All presenters should be registered. Attendance is free and open to the public.
IMPORTANT DATES
o October 23, 2024: Call for Papers
o February 3, 2025: Abstract Submission (300 Words)
o March 3, 2025: Abstract Notification for Paper Submissions
o June 9, 2025: Full Paper Submission Deadline
o August 11, 2025: Notifications to Authors (of Papers, Film/Videos, & Pecha Kucha)
o September 15, 2025: Symposium Registration Deadline
o September 15, 2025: Final Revised Submissions Due
o October 23—25, 2025: Symposium Dates
LOCATIONS
- College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Kent State University, Kent, OH
- The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, Cleveland, OH