"The Real Affects of Change": A Review

Abstract

The twelve sculptures that make up this work point to the human costs of mergers. In visualising the affective effects of mergers, the sculptures invite us to cast a different view, one focused on how these effects are embodied by the individual worker.

Affects are positive or negative investments that we have toward people, but also ideas, things and places (Goodwin et al. 2004:418). It is through affects that we often relate to others. Affect, as emotions, are embodied because "they entail some combination of sensation, behaviour and disposition" and involve "an articulation of bodily activity and worldly social context" (Crossley 2001:45). As Ahmed puts it, "it is through the movement of emotions that the very distinction between inside and outside, or the individual and social, is effected in the first place" (Ahmed 2004:28). The title of the piece suggests that the affects usually associated with transformations in the education sector are merely superficial, and probably not representative of the experiences of those involved. Instead, here affect is reconcidered in a nuanced way, and positioned as a main effect of these transformations.