It seems agreeable for everyone to believe that communication is always about translation – a mediation of sorts as opposed to direct and transparent speaking one’s mind. In translation, language, who holds authority and not-knowing play a role, as well as productive misunderstanding and having ‘information’ (input, things to process) without understanding. When we speak of violence, several concerns crop up: the new norms of trigger-warnings and setting boundaries around voluntary submission to violence, the fear that speaking about violence can beget violence, and its opposite, that the denial or avoidance of violence is a form of violence in itself. With collectivity come the questions of its necessity (what needs collective action), temporality (durability, rhythms), expansion of topics and concerns in order to go down into more personal and private conversations (which are also product of encounters), things we do together and how we live together (e.g. cooking). People were keen on investing collectively in the definition of the soul (e.g. how does the soul manifest? What does it do?). What became apparent in this week was the difference between discursive knowledge (concepts, study) and lived experience which also reveals the differences in contexts and positions from which we speak. Performance cruised our conversations searching for its subjects (socialism, lecture, soul).
