Re-embodiment in VR

Description

Body and time are perceived and researched in a variety of manners in different disciplines, ranging from quantitative conceptions and measurements of time and a cosmological-universal time to qualitative time, temporal experiences, duration of beings, sequence of events and so forth. There are also many ‘social times’ related to social phenomena such as holidays, ceremonies, work, weekends and so forth, as well as the individual experience and perception of time in the personal and social contexts. As for the body, it is measured, followed, defined and cured by the bio-medical discipline, while for the social scientist it is also a product of socio-cultural norms, psychological processes and phenomenological experiences.
The aspect of time, moreover, plays an important role in scientific and social ideas, practices and discourse related to the body – and has done so for over two millennia. Scholars, practitioners and lay people talk of the ‘biological clock’, for instance, and measure, quantify and define somatic experiences and phenomena by means of temporal units and terms.
This conference seeks to explore the empirical and theoretical dimensions of somatic-temporal relations, including the connection and tension between theory and practice and between individual experiences and scientific frameworks, as well as between ancient ideas of body and time and more modern ones. Our aim is to generate a transdisciplinary discussion among scholars and practitioners from the humanities and social and life sciences in order to examine methodological, practical and theoretical concepts of somatic times, including questions such as: how is time used in the assessment of the body – e.g. in diagnosing it as ‘healthy’, ‘normal’, ‘unhealthy’ or ‘abnormal? Who is responsible for defining somatic time-frames and what are the consequences of these definitions? How does the individual experience of time with respect to the body, or of the body with respect to time, relate to the social and scientific time-framing of bodies? Are there differences in the conceptions of somatic-temporal relations throughout history and across cultures?

Period	7 Jun 2017
Held at	Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Degree of Recognition	National