CFR Conference: Assemblia
DATE: OCTOBER 22ND 2026
Our Objective
Assemblia is organized through a collaborative, non-hierarchical structure grounded in accessibility, shared decision-making, and collective accountability.
Assemblia approaches feminism as a lived practice—often present even when it is not named. Across cultures and histories, feminist resistance has been misrecognized as hysteria, sanctity, deviance, or danger. Assemblia brings together people interested in attending to the language of feminism as acts of care, survival, and uprising.
Save the Date!
The Centre for Feminist Research Presents:
ASSEMBLIA: Gatherings, Hysterics and Rapture
Thursday October 22nd, 10am – 3pm (keynote 11:30-12:30), 519 Kaneff Tower
Please register by October 8th:(registration is free, see link at the bottom)
You are warmly invited to join us for the inaugural conference in what we hope will become an annual event organized by graduate students and members of the CFR. It provides an interdisciplinary forum for emerging and independent artists and scholars by bringing together studio practice, criticism and theory, gender studies, and art history.
Our keynote speaker will be Kerem Güman, Visiting Assistant Professor jointly appointed across the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design, the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies), and the Centre for Feminist Research at York University. Their talk is entitled Glitch, Endure, Assemble: Queer Digital Bodies at the Threshold (see talk abstract and bio below). The keynote will take place from 11:30-12:30.
Several graduate student panels will be organized around themes that include Hysteria as Care: Collective Resistance and Gathering; Rapture, Ritual, and the Embodied Experiences; Beyond the Normative Body: Queer Affect, Monstrosity, and More-than-Human Relations; Memory, Language and the Making of Self; and Fat Studies.
We are grateful to the Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation (VPRI) and the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (LA&PS) for funding this event.
More details will be forthcoming, including the conference schedule. Questions can be directed to cfrfeministfestival@gmail.com.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Keynote Abstract and Bio:
Glitch, Endure, Assemble: Queer Digital Bodies at the Threshold
This keynote takes as its starting point the figure of the avatar — the digital body that can be customised, broken, modded, and reimagined — as a site for thinking about queer survival under authoritarian infrastructures. Drawing on practice-based research into video games, durational video, and feminist digital aesthetics, the talk asks: what does it mean to assemble a self when the dominant system insists on a different configuration? What forms of collective knowledge emerge from underground modding communities, queer game spaces, and the informal archives of those who refuse to be rendered correctly by the machines that are supposed to represent them?
Moving between game theory, queer necropolitics, and Glissant's opacity, this keynote proposes "glitch" not as malfunction but as method — a way of inhabiting systems that were not designed for you, of trembling together at the edge of coherence, and of assembling something liveable from the fragments the system leaves behind.
Kerem Güman is a visual artist, curator, and scholar whose practice moves between painting, video, digital art, and critical theory. Holding a Proficiency in Art (PhD equivalent) from Dokuz Eylül University with a dissertation on the 56th Venice Biennale, and a curatorial certificate from the School for Curatorial Studies Venice (2015), Güman's research spans queer theory, game studies, infrastructure studies, and feminist fabulation. Their recent works include The Hill (2026), a durational work examining endurance, visibility, and the politics of remaining under pressure, and Between Lights (2026). Their publications include "Constructing Heterotopic Spaces in Meta-Narrative" (2024) and "The Biopolitics of the Colossus" (Arteoloji Dergisi, 2022).
How to Register to attend the Conference:
Registration is free for everyone!
Click HERE to register to attend. REGISTRATIONS ARE ACCEPTED TILL THURSDAY OCTOBER 8TH 2026.
Please note that registration is mandatory for everyone i.e. even if you are a volunteer or a presenter, you must register above!
How to Apply:
Click HERE to apply to be a volunteer. Volunteer Applications are accepted till Thursday October 8th 2026.
We welcome volunteers to take on leadership roles and help trace how feminism becomes visible through what is carried across time: bodies, memory, ritual, struggle, and everyday acts of living.
We are building a team across all departments to bring diverse perspectives, research, and ideas beyond the conventional structures of a conference.
Note that the call for presentations is now CLOSED.
