27. November – Eivind Røssak ” Care of the self in artistic practices”
My talk will discuss how contemporary art practices can investigate the conditions of attaining a self, not a traditional (bourgeois, i.e. the completely stable, stilled) self, but a self filled with the flows of life. I will use examples from last my book as well as Sophie Calles and others, and some of the theories of Michel Foucault (History of Sexuality III: The Care of the Self) and Gilles Deleuze (Bergsonism and Cinema I-II). . The starting point was the overwhelming concerns of the ego or the self in both contemporary mass media and the arts. What interest me is how the care of the self can be a perspective or take on being in a changing world.

Eivind Røssak is a writer currently completing his PhD at Institute for Media and Communication at the University of Oslo. He is the author of the publication “Selviaktagelse – en tendens i kunst og litteratur” published by the Norwegian Arts Council.