n partnership with If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution, Site Gallery is hosting a series of reading group discussions for exploring a number of texts relating to the notion of Affect. Often used interchangeably with the experience of feeling or emotion, this term can also describe an individual’s capacity to affect others and in turn to be affected by them.

Affect was a key concern underpinning the citywide festival Art Sheffield 2010 – Life: A User’s Manual. The reading group forms part of the wider programme of events relating to the forthcoming solo exhibition at Site by Jeremiah Day. The sessions are facilitated by Emma Cocker, a writer-artist based in Sheffield and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University.

In the first meeting on Thursday 23 February, we begin with two texts by Brian Massumi, The Autonomy of Affect (main), and (supplementary) Concrete Is As Concrete Doesn’t. There will also be reference to the introduction chapter An Inventory of Shimmers from The Affect Theory Reader, (ed.) Melissa Greg and Gregory J. Seigworth, Duke University Press, 2010. Future texts are to be confirmed in due course. An Inventory of Shimmers gives a broad overview of different perspectives on the notion of affect, and is a good text to maybe skim over as a way of getting one’s bearings!