From sensory experience to emotions, from the crossing over of tactility and aurality to the crossing over of love and grief.

This itinerary is explored through lonely train journeys that encounter Susan Sontag’s 'In America', Pablo Picasso’s 'Science and Charity'; Connie Palmen’s 'Logbook of a Merciless Year', Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree Live Tour and the philosophy of tactility of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray.

It all begins with taking the pulse: listen to your heartbeat by placing two fingers on your wrist.

Sylvia Solakidi is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Performance Philosophy, University of Surrey. She writes about experiences of time with the help of theatre and music performances, visual arts and literature, as well as through the writings of phenomenologists, anthropologists and performance scholars; she never forgets her experiences from Greek medical laboratories, where she used to work as a Biologist.

Sylvia Solakidi: The Pulse of Love and Grief

The smart city is an urban environment that uses technology to collect data and then uses those data to manage, monitor and ‘improve’ its systems and infrastructure. This, supposedly, makes life easier for its citizens and radically transforms the city. There are, however, significant social, political and cultural implications.

Our guest in this episode — the first of two on the theme of Technology — is creative writer Kim Clarke, whose research argues that, far from being anything inherently positive, such data-driven technologies work to ingrain capitalist ideology at an often-unconscious level. The term ‘surveillance capitalism’ comes to mind.

Kim also reads an extract from her science fiction novella, 'The Walkers,' which engages with these tensions of smart city. Using the well-known trope of teleportation, the novella explores what the individual relinquishes in order to live in an ‘improved’ environment. 'The Walkers' follows Hazel living in an alternative Hong Kong in which teleportation is the only method of transportation. Unknown to citizens, in the process of being ‘downloaded’ from one location and ‘uploaded’ to another, radical and revolutionary tendencies are removed from the individual’s personality…
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Kim Clarke is a practice-based PhD student at Royal Holloway. Her research and creative writing focus on the relationship between urban space and technology. She has had academic essays appear in Politactics: Conversations from Everyday Analysis (Zero Books, 2016) and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.
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The Technecast is supported by Techne-AHRC. Every two weeks, we invite a researcher in the Humanities to introduce their own work – be it academic, artistic or anything in between. If you like this episode, please share it with your friends. You can also subscribe to the Technecast via your podcast app.

This episode is produced and presented by Julien Clin. 
The Technecast team is made up of Polly Hember and Julien Clin. 
Contact us at technecaster@gmail.com or via Twitter @technecast

Capitalism and the Smart City: Kim Clarke's 'The Walkers'

Jennifer Doveton is a postgraduate researcher in her second year at Brunel University. Her research is on middle-class subjectivity and moral value in British screen fantasy. At the moment she's looking at the Harry Potter film series and the His Dark Materials television series for markers of class in characterisation and narratives of upward mobility that reproduce neoliberal ideologies of individual aspiration. In this podcast Doveton takes a look at the role of the home in these portal fictions and how these spaces and places contribute to the interiority, class, individualism and ultimately the moral standing of their main characters.
 
You can follow Jennifer on twitter here: @JDHDoveton and find her video essays on youtube under JDH Doveton: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqZMVlLA0y9FHBe4unzTbHw

Technecast:
This episode is presented by Felix Clutson.
The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.
Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecast / @pollyhember / @ClinJulien
Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com

Genre: Fantasy and the middle class

A two-parter this week. 

In the first part, Edwin Gilson introduces the literary label of climate fiction and investigates its usefulness, as well as the blurring of realism and science fiction, through the prism of a number of literary works set in California. 

Following on, Frances Hallam asks "What is cli-fi without sci-fi?". Their presentation gives us a glimpse at the interconnected histories and contemporary contentions across the scope of climate fiction and science fiction, and asks if we can meaningfully separate the two."

Edwin Gilson is a third-year PhD student at the University of Surrey, and his research relates to the Anthropocene through the lens of contemporary Californian climate fiction, with particular focus on the tension between the local and the planetary.

Frances Hallam (they/them) is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher at the University of Surrey. Their doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Aquafuturism’, explores ocean and sea creature imaginaries in 21st century speculative fiction that figure decolonial and eco-queer storytelling in the Atlantic.

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Technecast:
This episode is presented by Felix Clutson.
The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.
Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecast / @pollyhember / @ClinJulien
Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com

Genre: climate fiction, speculative fiction and blurring boundaries

We interrupt our scheduled programming to bring you this special episode in light of recent events. Techne's summer congress this year was cancelled due to the on-going industrial action taking place at the University of Brighton. In this episode, the Technecast team explore why industrial action is taking place at Brighton, and the position of the arts and humanities more broadly in UK higher education. A huge thank you to Luke Beesley, a Brighton PGR who gave us a really informative interview for this episode.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/brightonucusolidarity

If you would like to share your research with the Technecast community, or have any comments about today's episode, please get in contact at technecaster@gmail.com, or follow us on twitter at @technecast or on Instagram @technepodcast

A Congress Cancelled and the Humanities in Calamity

Walter Benjamin's 'The Fall of Herculaneum and Pompeii', read by Dr Vassiliki Kolocotroni.

Recorded at the Antonine Wall Exhibition in the University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum.

Amy Bromley and Katy Hastie (Producers)
Niall Morris (Sound Editor)
Kyle Steward (Theme Music Composition)

Episode 1 The Fall Of Herculaneum And Pompeii With Dr Vassiliki Kolocotroni

Ruth Hansford  talks to Professor Bran Nicol, Head of the School of Literature and Languages at Surrey, about cultural “extramural” psychoanalysis and its enduring themes. In the early days of lockdown, over Zoom, they explore hysteria, otherness, language, performance and narrative, intimacy and “extimacy”, and how these can be seen in Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window,  a film that also resonates for our contemporary confinement.
 
It includes reference to Laplanche and Pontalis's 'The Language of Psychoanalysis' (Routledge, 1988). Photo credit: Nicholas Heath

Ruth Hansford: Enduring Psychoanalysis

A professional storyteller since 2015, Jon is fascinated by the connections between folklore, history, landscape and identity - which he is pursuing through his PhD at the University of Brighton. In this podcast, he discusses "eco-storytelling" (the use of myth and folktale to promote environmental awareness) and illustrates how its reach can be broadened through lessons from oral history theory and subculture studies. If we are storytelling beings, what stories do we make to address urban life? How can these be brought to bear to enrich our understanding of place and its connections to ourselves?

Twitter: @jonmase
Facebook: "Jon Mason Stories and Music"
https://jonthestoryteller.com/
https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/jon-mason

Jon Mason: Folklore and Myths in Urban Settings

In this episode Selin Genc collaborates with Orestis Lepine to interweave prose and music to explore the feeling of vertigo she suffers during her artistic process. Drawing on various creative traditions such as Land art, Colour Field Painting, speculative fiction, and cartography, she attempts to chart her predicament and find traces of analogous experiences in the works of others. 

The literary references mentioned in this podcast can be found in Italo Calvino’s ‘Collection of Sand’, 'Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings', and Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Dreamtigers’.

Selin’s visual works can be viewed on her website https://selingenc-art.wixsite.com/portfolio

Selin Genc: Creative Cartographies

An academic podcasting community open to all arts & humanities researchers. Each month takes a new theme, where Felix Clutson, Edwin Gilson, Morag Thomas, Olivia Aarons and Isabel Sykes invite different guests to speak about their work. Kindly supported by techne AHRC doctoral training partnership. Thanks for listening!

If you'd like to get in touch, please email technecaster@gmail.com, follow us on twitter at @technecast or on Instagram @technepodcast

Genre: climate fiction, speculative fiction and blurring boundaries

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