Annual Conference 2013 BEING WITH

Conventionally a place of assembly means a place where people come together and whose conditions predetermine the rules governing who can assemble there and what activities are possible. The IKKM annual conference will extend the capacity for assembly from people to objects and examine assemblages as synchronizations of people and objects. In this sense, it will focus on the actions and operations that constitute these of assembly do not precede the activities that occur in them, but are rather produced through the linking and networking of operations and their synchronization. The traditional concept of place is thus inverted in favor of processes of ‘becoming place’ and bonding forces of assemblies. “Being with” studies networks of distributed actions and seeks to assess the potential of places of assembly as open ensembles of couplings, affinities, and attachments.