Materiality, Society and the More-than-Human 2025 -This is not a Burial: Griefwork through Film and Flesh with Charisse Louw (Workshop)
A BSA New Materialisms Study Group, in conjunction with the BSA Death, Dying and Bereavement Study Group and the University of Bristol Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF), International Zoom Seminar Series
27 October 2025 (14:00-16:00 GMT)
Online
Speaker
- Charisse Louw (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) - This is not a Burial: Griefwork through Film and Flesh
Abstract
In the concluding part of this series, South African researcher and somatic practitioner Charisse Louw explores how grief, collapse, and speculative world-making intersect across African cinema, digital systems, and embodied experience. Her work proposes zombie as methodology: an embodied, relational, and affective response to ecological collapse, systemic violence, and technological saturation.
Drawing on Black technopoetics, Indigenous cosmologies and media materialisms, this workshop invites participants into the cracks — those unstable spaces where dominant systems falter and more-than-human futures emerge.
Charisse’s approach speaks directly to sociodigital futures, tracing how digital infrastructures and extractive epistemologies shape our bodies, griefs, and possibilities. This workshop offers a poetic yet rigorous space to feel, think, and move with collapse...and to explore what it might mean to re-world from the ruins.
Biography
Charisse Louw is a Cape Town-based researcher, writer, and somatic facilitator. She lectures in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch University and is completing a PhD on African cinema, media materialism, and embodied methodologies. Her work spans academic theory, speculative fiction, and community-based wellness practices. She is a 2025 Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Sociodigital Futures.
Registration
This event is free to attend, but registration is required.
The workshop will be delivered via Zoom.