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“Viral Atmospheres: Maneuvering the affective geographies of pandemics and health”

Berlin, 21.9.-28.9.2025

Organizers
Sung Joon Park (BNITM Hamburg, Germany), Hansjörg Dilger (FU Berlin, Germany), Julia Hornberger (Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa), Bo Kyeong Seo (Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea), Nene Morisho (Pole Institute, Goma, DRC), Jacqueline Häußler (BNITM Hamburg, Germany)
Keynote speakers
Frédéric Keck (LAS Paris, France)
Tania Rossetto (Università di Padova, Italy)
Arne Vogelgesang (Artist, Berlin, Germany)
Viral Atmosphere Summer School
Viral Atmosphere is a transdisciplinary summer school on the felt spaces of the Covid-19 pandemic. The concept of the atmosphere draws our attention to the ways feelings can be understood to ‘surround us,’ to be ‘poured into space,’ ‘occupy spaces’ and are influenced by space, as recent works in neophenomenology have been characterizing this concept*. That is,an atmosphere is essentially a description of the felt space—a Gefühlsraum.
In our summer school, we suggest that felt spaces help us to enrich our understanding of the impact of the pandemic and the global health response to it. For instance, an isolation room may be a three-dimensional space. Exploring it as a felt space filled with feelings of anxieties, exhaustion, or ease helps us to get a grasp at the embodied experience of immobilization during the pandemic. Public spaces can be similarly conceived as felt spaces of exposure that radiate feelings of mistrust, vulnerability, and fear. Or, exploring the digital world of social media and the internet as a felt space may proffer new questions for understanding how information and also misinformation affects people.
Viral Atmosphere Summer School
2024/06/13
SungJoon Park
summerschool
[Seminar] How Ebola Epidemics Change, Change, and Change: Biosocial Histories of Planetary Health