CEM Keynote Address: Towards the Love of Missing Out (LOMO)

Friday, November 11th, 9:45 AM

In lieu of a standard keynote address and in keeping with our focus on Contact, affect, and collaboration, our featured speakers will be the members of the Centre for Emotional Materiality: Surabhi Saraf, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Marcus Brittain Fleming, and Mariah Hill. They will present a series of activations, themed “Towards the Love of Missing Out (LOMO).”

In this talk, the members of the CEM will help reframe the idea of FOMO (fear of missing out), transforming FOMO from a shameful reaction into an indicator of our most vital needs: to be validated, to be loved, to belong. CEM believes that we can morph FOMO into something more nourishing and generative that centers care and connection. We hope that this shift helps attendees navigate the pitfalls of online spaces in healthier ways.

Centre for Emotional Materiality (CEM) is a collective of multidisciplinary artists and researchers who examine the algorithmic conditioning of emotions and its effects on our bodies and beliefs. We devise strategies in the form of workshops, study circles, toolkits, rituals etc. for holistic thinking, feeling, and acting in the digital era.

Our work is grounded in building collective knowledge and discourses by taking research outside of the lab, and bringing it to our communities. We foster nonlinear, nonbinary, critical research and creative thinking-through-making. With a focus on emotional health, intelligence, and imagination, we envision new kinds of affective relationships with technology that pave pathways for interdependent and pluralist futures.

CEM embraces the Blob and its fluid potential as an organizing principle. We morph, shift, and adopt as needed. CEM is organized by Surabhi Saraf, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Caroline Sinders, Marcus Fleming, and Mariah Hill.