Paper short abstract:

Kink, such as sadomasochism and fetishism, is highly materialistic in nature. In this presentation, I discuss the meanings behind kink objects for the kinky individuals, how kink materiality shows in homes, and how materiality relates to kink identity.

Paper long abstract:

Kink, such as sadomasochism and fetishism, is highly materialistic in nature. In this presentation, I discuss the materiality of kink. I ask what the meanings behind kink objects are, why are they important in kink, and how are they intertwined with affect. Kink can also be seen in homes, sometimes among everyday life objects and items. How does this throwntogetherness and entanglement of objects affect the atmosphere of the home and why are certain items so important for kinksters.

My research material are photographs kinky identified individuals have taken of their homes and of their favourite pieces of clothes, accessories, toys, and equipment. They have also written about these materialities and their affective meanings. In kink, the material choice can be an extension of a person’s identity and sometimes a symbol of a relationship dynamic. The home can be seen as an entanglement of various objects and affects. Kinky objects situated at home are directing action towards kink and enabling these desires. The kinky objects might be intentionally placed in certain locations at home but with other mundane objects they constitute a throwntogetherness, which can be seen as a reflection of the inhabitant’s life and personality. For example, a basket on the desk with ropes used for erotic bondage also inhabits office supplies and sewing equipment creating a collection of items that seemingly have nothing in common with each other, yet this throwntogetherness might reveal something about the person living in this home and create the home’s atmosphere.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Emirati women’s flânerie in Dubai’s shopping malls as a multi-sensory experience. It investigates how the material and social environments of the mall evoke a range of affective responses among Emirati flâneuses, including pleasure, disgust, and a sense of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores Emirati women’s flânerie in Dubai’s shopping malls as a multi-sensory experience. It investigates how the material and social environments of the mall evoke various affective responses among Emirati flâneuses, including pleasure, disgust, and belonging.

The figure of the flâneur as idle stroller and passionate observer of modern city life remains valuable for studying urban sensations. While early analyses concentrated on the flâneur’s mobile gaze, the recent “sensual turn” in scholarship has challenged this predominant focus on vision. Aimee Boutin (2012) for example suggests to investigate flânerie as multi-sensory embodied experience rather than disengaged spectatorship.

Building on such insights from the field of sensory urbanism, my paper will first focus on Emirati flâneuses’ affective responses to the carefully arranged material assemblage of malls. I explore why Emirati women prefer the atmosphere of this aestheticized space over other walkscapes such as Dubai’s streets or traditional markets, and why they feel “at home” there. The second part investigates the “visceral micro-politics” (Pow 2017) of flânerie in the multicultural arena of Dubai’s malls. I show how Emirati women negotiate socio-spatial boundaries in encounters with mall users from different nationalities and socio-economic classes whose appearance, smell, noise or physical proximity are perceived as sensory excess. While such transgressions often cause discomfort and lead to calls for a stricter policing of sensory conduct, they also elicit curiosity and the thrill of glimpsing the city’s diversity in the safe microcosm of the shopping mall.

Paper short abstract:

Gentrification modifies the materiality of the environment which affects residents’ experience and ways of emplacement, and creates atmospheres of (dis-)belonging to the neighbourhood. It is through everyday practices that residents challenge, negotiate and deal with such transformation processes.

Paper long abstract:

Kreuzberg, an inner-city area in Berlin, Germany, has experienced a diversification of urban popula-tions since the reunification in 1989. Ongoing transformations linked to urban re-structuring process-es, increased mobility and migration, have resulted in a growing polarization of the housing market, processes of upscaling and displacement, with gentrification gaining momentum. This affects how residents experience living in the neighbourhood, how they relate to the neighbourhood and how they emplace themselves individually and collectively. This ethnographic study explores neighbourhood as a material and affective space shaping and shaped by everyday practices, experiences, social relations, memories and imaginations. It looks at how inhabitants experience the altered materiality in the built environment, what atmosphere those alterations create for the residents, how it shapes their sense of belonging to the neighbourhood, and how they challenge, negotiate and deal with those changes through their everyday material, social and spatial practices. It argues that the material alterations in the built environment, such as fences, paved footpaths or renovated facades, but also everyday traces like broken glass bottles in the street, graffiti on the wall, guerrilla flowerbeds and DYI-furniture in buffer strips, create an atmosphere of change, but also of contestation, affecting notions of belonging and dis-belonging to the neighbourhood.

Paper short abstract:

Contemporary courses on mindfulness and deceleration connect bodies, objects and emotions in affective atmospheres. Creating spaces of belonging is one of their elementary methods as a part of self-care practices, drawing upon and aiming at being independent of the surroundings at the same time.

Paper long abstract:

Rolling out the mat, placing a meditation cushion on it, making a singing bowl sing: these are some typical practices in courses on mindfulness and deceleration, connecting bodies, objects and emotions in affective atmospheres. These courses offer to help people to reconnect to the body and the self and aim to establish new ways of dealing with everyday constraints by conveying practical skills like meditation, Feldenkrais or forest-bathing. Habits and routines are often closely connected to specific objects, evoking new or reframing already existing relationships with them. Some objects (like smartphones) are rendered invisible or become ‘non-existent’ during the courses while others (like singing bowls) are brought into focus and sometimes even manage to cross the border between course setting and home, thus connecting extraordinary and everyday life. Creating spaces of belonging, collectively and individually, through objects is an elementary method in the courses as a part of self-care practices. Here, a sense of belonging is related to and evoked by specific surroundings and objects. At the same time, belonging is portrayed and mediated as something that can be found in oneself, establishing a non-material approach to belonging as well.

I have conducted ethnographical research in different courses in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and can therefore draw upon empirical data. In my talk I will focus on the role of objects in people’s stories and practices of belonging and their connections with emotions, biographies and the perception of atmospheres.