Feeling Through the Cracks: Emotions in Times of Turbulence and Change

Beginning of December, the Critical Emotions Collective will host the 2-day workshop 'Feeling Through the Cracks: Emotions in Times of Turbulence and Change' in Utrecht. This free event is aimed at researchers from different disciplines, artists, practitioners, and those working within institutions, movements, and communities - anyone curious about the emotional dimensions of change.

Across the world, ecological crisis and political turbulence are reshaping societies. As the familiar erodes, emotions such as anxiety, grief, anger, and hope come to the surface. We witness backlash against climate policies, deepening polarisation, and the emergence of movements seeking to build alternatives in the cracks of a crumbling order. The turbulences that surface are rooted in the worldviews we have inherited. In Western modernity, emotion has often been regarded as subordinate to reason, reinforcing divides between mind and body, human and nature, fact and feeling. This view has narrowed our understanding of change and obscured the emotional roots of politics, power and crumbling democracies. Yet emotion is never only personal - it moves through societies, shaping what we find meaningful, what we resist, and what we create together. For us, this builds an imperative to bring together researchers, artists, and practitioners in a workshop to jointly explore how feeling and imagination can open new pathways for transformation. We wonder:

• How do our emotional cultures impact the ways we navigate crisis and power dynamics?
• How can we create spaces for emotions that open up ways to meaningfully respond to the turbulent social and political climate?
• How might reclaiming emotion help us reconfigure our sense of self and the world?
• What are the risks if emotions continue to flow as hidden undercurrents within our democracies?
• How might we reclaim emotions and embrace the ruptures, as spaces for renewal, collective learning and resources for navigating toward radically different, sustainable and democratic futures?
• How can we translate these insights into practice: from ideas on how to invite alternative emotional values into our societies, to reimagining democratic practices and reconfiguring relationships that bind us?

Through artistic, reflective practices and theoretical discussions, we experiment with ways to make visible the emotional foundations of our lives and to unlearn the hierarchies that silence them. Inspired by philosopher Bayo Akomolafe’s idea of cracks - disruptions in dominant systems that invite new possibilities - we approach today’s ruptures as spaces for renewal. We welcome researchers from different disciplines with an interest in emotions, as well as artists, practitioners, and those working within institutions, movements, and communities - anyone curious about the emotional dimensions of change.

The Organisers

Lena and Christina are both PhD researchers critically investigating the role of emotions in society. Lena studies emotional and power dynamics in prefigurative movements. Meanwhile, Christina examines the role of emotions in climate politics, focusing on ways to redramatize public engagement that foster the embrace of environmental change and reinvigorate democratic processes (CIDAPE). Both are Co-Creators of the Critical Emotions Collective, a group of researchers dedicated to examining the often-overlooked but powerful role of emotions in turbulent times, particularly in relation to meaning-making processes, social movements, pedagogies, policymaking, and democracy. The workshop invitation is co-written by Anne Jesuina, an anti-disciplinary, somatic - abolitionist artist  of Dutch and Afro-Brazilian descent, based in Utrecht. Anne will be giving a workshop at the training.

Funding

The event is funded by the Copernicus Junior Fund of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University.