Heads up on a symposium at MIT this weekend, entitled WHAT OBJECT?
WHAT OBJECT?

Objects are at once physical bodies, grammatical constructions, and philosophical abstractions. We obsess over objects of desire, objects of affection, and objects of scorn; we encounter found objects, objets d'art, object lessons, and the occasional objection. In short, we are awash in objects, objectives, and objectification; the discourse of objects can be both concrete and endlessly expansive.

In that spirit, the object of this email is to announce the fourth annual Research-in-Progress, presented by the History, Theory and Criticism section of the Department of Architecture at MIT. The 2008 workshop aims to offer graduate students an opportunity to work together in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional dialogues, and, specifically, with objects in mind.

To introduce Things That Talk, Lorraine Daston writes: "Imagine a world without things. It would be not so much an empty world as a blurry, frictionless one: no sharp outlines would separate one part of the uniform plenum from another; there would be no resistance against which to stub a toe or test a theory or struggle stalwartly. Nor would there be anything to describe, or to explain, remark on, interpret, or complain about – just a kind of porridgy oneness. Without things, we would stop talking."[1]

Our object-riddled and thing-populated world, then, urges us to keep talking. This is precisely what we hope this meeting of Research-in-Progress will foster: continuing dialogues about how objects work in our world, how they don't work in our world, what they do, and, fundamentally, how they keep us in conversation with one another. How are our practices – artistic, architectural, scientific, academic, everyday and otherwise – continually informed by objects? And how do the objects of our practices necessitate overlap with other kinds of practices? Or, alternatively, when do we reject objects? And to what ends?

Check out the website here