Pioneer Works

Centre for Emotional Materiality (CEM) is a site for experimental research on digital technologies with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to understand how intelligent technologies shape contemporary life. Founded and currently headed by multimedia artist Surabhi Saraf, CEM is an ever morphing collaborative project with a rotating cast of contributors. Our focus for 2019-2020 is building resistance towards platforms that surveil, manipulate, and automate the human experience.

At Pioneer Works, CEM is launching Emotions as Materials, a Study Circle examining biological, algorithmic, and political realities of emotions.

We will read
We will listen
We will move
We will talk

We will address the issues of emotional surveillance and mood manipulation that feeds the digital economy and its implications on our social, political, and economic lives. The Study Circle meetings will involve reading, movement, and listening exercises grounded in the emotionally material body, to build new forms of collective knowledge.

The study circles will be held in small intimate settings with 8-12 participants and will be facilitated by CEM members Surabhi Saraf, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, and M Eifler. Each meeting will be centered on a question and a reading that we will send out beforehand.

The Study Circle will meet on the following 5 dates at Pioneer Works from 6-8 PM.

Nov 6th: Emoto-blob: How are our emotions made?
Nov 13th: Insta-feels: How do we feel when we consume/produce content online?
Nov 20th: Mood-ify: How do we experience mood mining by online music platforms?
Dec 4th: Feelo-sophical: What are the wider ramifications when emotions become data?
Dec 11th: The Beyond: What do we want from our emotional/economic/ecological future?