NASA and ESA claim that no image has revolutionized our understanding of the universe as much as the Hubble Deep Field (1995). Taken over 10 consecutive days, this stellar photograph contains the deepest visible-light image of approximately 10,000 galaxies in the cosmos. Replete with circular, oval, and non-geometrical shapes, each representing a different galaxy, the Hubble Deep Field confronts us with a perceptual quality peculiar to astrophotography: the measurement of affective intensities in the universe. In other words, it lays bare the exteriority of cosmic affects: the fact that, unlike feelings and emotions, affects come to us from without, as unformed, unstructured, non-conscious, pre-personal, and asignifying states. From an astronomical perspective, this photo represents our spatial proximity to the Big Bang: the origin of the universe’s exponential expansion. But seen photographically, it embodies what I refer to as “evental edges” of the universe, where affective qualities abound. To examine measures of intensity in the Hubble Deep Field, I employ a “liminological” methodology. Postulated by Ed. S. Casey, this approach takes the understanding of an entity to its perceptual limit; that is, to its very discernible edge (Casey, 2017). By employing this phenomenological method, I first investigate the spatial specificities of different edges in the Hubble Deep Field photo, namely their perceptual borders, boundaries, gaps, rims, margins, and verges. Next, I turn to the affective qualities of such edges to show how this photograph encloses and discloses our emotional impingements in the world. To do this, I draw on different dispositions of affect, such as “vibration”, “resonance”, and “distention” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009), showing how this photo embodies affectivity as a form of “immanent intensity” (Massumi, 2002). Having discussed its spatiality and affectivity, I finally examine the temporal intensity of this photograph through the concept of “the event”: as a disruptive effect that exceeds its establishing causes retroactively (Badiou 2014; Zizek 2014). In doing so, I propose the notion of “evental edges” as a conceptual framework for understanding the affective intensity of astrophotography. Evental edges are the perceptual peripheries of the Hubble Deep Field photograph, each infused with affective intensity, spatial liminality, and temporal asymmetry. Beyond rendering the universe visible astronomically, these edges disclose its affective intensities photographically.
14.01.
Mi / 10:30 – 12:00
Evental Edges of the Universe
Peripherality, Affectivity, and the Event
Ali Shobeiri, Leiden University
Online (Zoom) & Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen (KWI), Room 106, Goethestr. 31, 45128 Essen