Madness and Art:

The Gentle Art of the m(ad)-Other in Feminist Theory in/and Praxis

NSU Study Circle 4 An/Other\not-I/(m)\Other in Feminist Philosophy
invites you to participate in its Winter Symposium
6-8 March 2026, Bergen, Norway
Special workshop day on Saturday 7 March, which can be attended on its own.

Theory is not art, but some forms of it are.
But maybe art is theory-in-form, sensual and affective.
~ Judith Butler, quoting Bracha Ettinger

How to be an artist in a mad world, polarised and where value is economically defined? The speed of economic and military strategic interest has transformed the world into a non-place (Paul Virilio). To inhabit a place that is outside the realm of the human, is, according to Bracha Ettinger, a characteristic of modern everyday life. Life is an “odyssey into no-man’s land and, emanating from this, the exclusion from any possible form of connection.”(1)

Artists forego this inability of connection in a practise of gentleness: in which gentleness can be understood through the words of Anne Dufourmantelle, as follows:

“Gentleness is primarily an intelligence, one that carries life, that saves and enhances it. Because it demonstrates a relationship to the world that sublimates astonishment, possible violence, capture, and pure compliance out of fear, it may alter everything and every being. It is an understanding of the relationship with the other, and tenderness is the epitome of this relationship.” (2)

This Winter Symposium we invite artists, thinkers, writers, performers, academics and others, to share in their theory and/in practises to being present with oneself and the relationship with others, outside the binary relationships of belonging or not belonging, being and nothingness, hero and victim, perpetrator and advocate. We invite an exploration of the concept of ‘madness’ as a porous way towards the other as Other, as the impossible, the m/Other and mad-other, and all responses to not fitting in the contemporary polarized world. We invite the breaking points involved in the obsessions that the world makes it impossible to let go of, that speak to the necessity of connection.

Our circle is mostly concerned with feminist, queer and socially engaged art and text-based art, yet very open to other practices to share in this search for an answer to the obligations the world puts on us. We invite collaborations, laboratories, explorations and experimentation.

How can thinkers and artists embrace the concept of ‘madness’, which “is kept out of bounds as a nadir of meaninglessness, a breeding ground for unreal apparitions, chimeras, and sham.(…) When we listen carefully to expressions of madness, we hear a philosophical sound, a sense of having been seized by themes of vital importance that we know from the traditions of philosophy.”(3) How to reclaim the m(ad)-Otherness by the very act of creation?

“To have a future is to be vulnerable and unstable, a stranger to oneself. The self-mastering subject, in safeguarding himself again such vulnerability, instability, and strangeness, ends up safeguarding himself against the possibility of having a future, and of future possibilities to come. (…) … the unpredictability of the future depends on plurality.” (4)

Invitation

In this symposium we invite participants to share their own work and explorations around the theme of creating a future by being with yourself and the m(ad)/Other in a polarised world.

We are actively welcoming proposals for workshops, proposals for collaborative and interactive sessions, which may be accompanied by presentations and theoretical framing. We welcome personal experiences and artistic practices. We discourage formal and purely academic presentations. If you would like to (in addition) propose a reading of a specific work, we welcome you to share your suggestions.

Please send an email with your application, including a title of your workshop and a short description (2 paragraphs is sufficient) to: nicole.nobyeni@nsuweb.org

We will accept proposals on a rolling basis. Deadline: 31 January 2026. If you wish to attend without proposing a workshop/session, the deadline is 25 Februari 2026.

Practical Information

Unfortunately we will not be able to support participants with grants for travel and accommodation. Participants are responsible to reserve their own accommodation. However, all meals are included in the participation fee, as we have learned that sharing meals together is an essential part of the symposium experience we aim for.

The participation fee includes:

all meals during the conference, so: lunch and dinner
coffee breaks with snacks
NSU membership fee 2025 (30 euro)

There are two options to join: Full program Friday to Sunday / only the Saturday program

For local people joining

Program

The program will be held at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Klosteret 17, 5005 Bergen, Norway.

Friday 6th of March: 12:00 start with soup and bread, 12:30 start program: open atelier and conversations and exploring the theme until 17:00. End the day by having dinner together (covered by NSU)

Saturday 7th of March: 12:00 start with soup and bread, 12:30 start program: workshops, performances, lectures and conversations until 17:00. End the day by having dinner together (optional, not covered by NSU)

Sunday 8th of March: 12:00 start with soup and bread, 12:30 start program: open atelier and conversations and exploring the theme until 17:00. End the day by having dinner together (covered by NSU)

For students and self-employed people, we offer discounts. Please ask for the discount code to enter while booking. We will not return money, so please ask us for the code if you fall in the discount category (no proof needed).

Participation fees:

Regular fee: 90 euro (includes 30 euro NSU membership fee)
Discount (students & self-employed): 45 euro (includes 30 euro NSU membership fee)

Fee waivers available for local students, artists and other self-employed people, please contact us before paying, so you get a discount code to reduce the fee to 0.

NSU is run fully by volunteers, so the fees will only be used to cover actual costs.

This conference is co-organised and co-funded by NSU and Hordaland Kunstsenter.

About this Study Circle

This study circle explores feminist methods of collaboration in art and writing, and returns again and again to several contemporary thinkers: Bracha Ettinger, Luce Irigaray, Djamila Ribeiro, as well as Audre Lorde, Clarice Lispector, bell hooks, Anne Dufourmantelle and Conceição Evaristo.

Footnotes

Rosi Huhn, The Folly of Reason, In: Art as Compassion: Bracha Ettinger, eds. Catherine de Zegher and Griselda Pollock, 2011, p.53
Anne Dufourmantelle, Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living, 2018, p.14
Wouter Kusters, A Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking, MIT Press, 2020.
Fanny Söderbäck, Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray, 2019, p.270.

NORDIC SUMMER UNIVERSITY

WS 2026: Madness and Art – Circle 4