How the Face is Un/represent(able) in the Context of
Emotion and Affect
Ayşe Uslu

Philosopher Ayşe Uslu opens a discussion on the portrait as a form of representation and its relationship with emotion and affect in art works as a part of the exhibition Look At Me! Portraits and Other Fictions from the “la Caixa” Contemporary Art.

“The face is read as a surface on which emotional signs are deciphered. This perspective makes it a field for representation that establishes a relationship between the subject and morality. Emotions are mental states, which are owned by a subject and named by the reflexive consciousness. However, the affective nature of the body cannot be reduced to merely a process, which involves owning of mental states by the reflexive consciousness. The affect corresponds to the un-representable affective processes and transition fields of the body. Proceeding representative emotions both in chronology and causality, this is defined as the more layered “in-between” states. In this context, each time art tries to capture affect through facial representations, what it does in fact, is no more than an attempt to understand a certain formation by immobilizing it. ”

Born in Germany in 1984 Ayşe Uslu lives and works in Istanbul. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree from METU Department of Philosophy, she completed her master’s degree in Bilkent University Department of Media and Visual Studies with a thesis, which studies the relationship between perception phenomenology and visual anthropology. Meanwhile, she attended training programs on visual ethnography methods in Holland and France, and produced films in this field. She completed her PhD in both METU and Tilbug University with her dissertation on a study of the relationship between affect and embodied cognition. She is currently producing videos and films in addition to her research and publications on the philosophy of film and video; philosophy of affect in relation to the bodily sources of thought; relationship between memory and perception; and the philosophy of mind and time. She teaches courses in philosophy, aesthetics, design philosophy, philosophy of time and sociology of emotions.

The talk will take place in the exhibition floor. Free of admissions, drop in. The talk will be in Turkish.

Temporary Exhibition