Saskia Smith
 
1999, Leuven
Based in Brussels

Medusa Offspace
Polyflows
The Bureau

Proto-ideology:

Polyflows understands “knowledge” as a WIP –not as information that awaits to be revealed, but rather a collaborative construct by means of undomesticated curiosity. Grounded in this premise, it orchestrates the “happening” of an (accessible) reading group, while revising some of its conventional formalities.

In this attempt, Polyflows moves away from the left-to-right reading of a text and curates materials of various mediums from diverse cultural outputs; from theoretical texts to niche blogs, from wiki-pages to YouTube content, from images, to pop-culture video-clips, from Wikipedia entries to objects brought in by participants. Each session loosely centers around a single keyword, phrase, concept, or phenomenon, and incorporates these input materials in varying degrees of experimentation.

As such, Polyflows seeks inspiration from the dynamics of the internet, where content is inter-linked across different pages, informational intake is fractured in a non-linear multi-tabbed chaos, and reflective discourse in the comments section unfurls in multiple directions, deviating from initial content to take on a life of its own.

The objective of the reading group is not so much to eventuate collective intelligence, as it is to draw on unconventional stockpiles of information, experiment with conversation topics, play with strategies of dialogue, gamble on intellect, fictionalise truth and weave personal stories through theoretical lenses.

Previous sessionsNourish, Moisture, Protect
Fountains of Youth Cream
Digital Bling

Nourish, Moisture, ProtectThu Jul 19 2022Dying to know why #DermatologistsHateHer for the #OneSimpleTrick that #InstantlyReducesWrinkles? On Jan 9th, we continue the conversation (newcomers welcome!) on the persistent allure of “eternal youth” as a marketable desire, to speculate on what patterns, processes and structures lurk behind the #anti-aging #anti-discomfort #ultra-cooling and #detoxifying notations of a #rejuvenating skincare regimen for an #age-perfect #revitalift. We’ll cultivate connections between the symbolic, cultural, and aesthetic value of water, hydration, and fluidity, to eventually drift through the idea’s behind “liquid-modernity” and “hydrofeminism.”

Keywords: (pseudo)science, advertising, cosmetic product discourse, 

Fountains of Youth CreamFri Jul 19 2022The “Fountain of Youth” is a mythical source of water that allegedly has the power to restore youth and vitality to those who bathe in its waters. In the upcoming session titled “Fountains of Youth Cream” the focus centers on the seemingly ordinary theme of age(ing) from various points of view: from the biological process of growth and decay, to its socially-rendered image; from the “I took a picture every day for x-years” video trend, to marriage, life stages, rites of passage, photography, before-after comparisons, skin(care), advertising, youth and water. We ask: is youth a form of capital? How is the process of growth and decay atomised through images in culture? Is time a currency? What underlies the association between youth and water? How do we reflect this to skincare ideals? What underlies the association between youth and water?… get ready to plunge into these questions. This collective conversation will be initiated by a small exploratory lecture, afterwards we’ll together discuss different snippets of texts, videos and images.

Keywords: ageism, time, photography, wedding imagery, baby birth images, battle of the generations, change, transformation, grow, adapt, disrupt, revolutionise, decompose, fade, mature, get off, flourish, generate, re-generate, corrode, go in fashion, melts, condensate, oxidise...

Digital BlingFri Jul 19 2022What distinguishes certain image-edits, causing them to outpour with meaning or give rise to social relations, be “thicker,” than others? This session embarks on a gesture to collectively read images that have been subjected to phone-edits, deepening our understanding of their socially formative potential, investigating why and how certain images may be charged with specific connotations. Anthropologist Jennifer Deger’s article “Thick Photography” will contribute to our understanding of this question as she observed a unique visual culture within the Aboriginal Australian Yolŋu community. This visual culture involves image-editing practices that incorporate layered embellishments, shimmering frames, and sparkly graphics onto portraits. The infusion of “digital bling” transforms Yolŋu photographs into a nuanced medium, expressing cultural textures, animating meaning, and mediating traditional Yolŋu cultural heritage. Given the emergence of this visual style on early internet platforms like blingee.com, we ponder on how the meanings and connotations of the visible surface vary across diverse social, temporal, and cultural contexts.

Keywords: internet, camp, glitter

The EmojiThu 5th March Emojis’s fill 🌉 gaps of nuanced communication 💬 that the words we send each other digitally may leave unfilled 😖. They punctuate text messages, decorate posts 🐒, take over reactions, enhancing clarity or leaving direct communication obscured. But beyond a cartoonesque labeling system representing individual emotions 😬 and literal things 🦅, emojis enrich textual communication, unearth of intents, discern sarcasm 😭, and assist textual content. 

This sessions of Polyflows, intends to bring “emojis” beyond their status as simple, cartoonesque digital icons and view the emoji as a cultural artifact, possessing an elasticity of meanings between language, feelings, are cultural entities. What is their effect on the written word, how do emojis augment, improve or obscure communication, but more so — how are they context-specific and culturally constructed under changing and emerging generations, cultures, times and trends? 🍎 ✅

 

©Saskia Smith