◆ May 14–15, 2025 ◆ on-site / online ◆
Feeling Machines is an interdisciplinary conference organized by the Gender Studies Centre at the European Humanities University (EHU) and hosted at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius.
Contemporary Art Centre,
The event explores the socio-political dimensions of emotions, focusing on how they are deeply entangled with gender, technology, and capital.
Emotions are not neutral; they are shaped by political, economic, and social contexts, influencing how we re/act, on our ability to co-operate, solidarize, or atomise. Drawing on capital theory, we explore how different forms of individual capital—financial, human, emotional, symbolic, social, and others—impact emotional and gender perspectives. The triad of 'gender, technologies, and capital' is central and interdependent, forming complex dynamics.
Over two days, the conference brings together scholars, artists, and practitioners from diverse fields to critically engage with themes such as emotion detection in AI, feminist resistance, affective infrastructures, surveillance, digital labour, and artistic responses to extractivist technologies.
Conference Program
May 14, 2025
10:00–19:00
10:00
Registration
10:30
Opening Remarks
Almira Ousmanova
European Humanities University
Valentinas Klimašauskas Director of Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius
Antonina Stebur co-founder of the Women in Tech, European Humanities University.
10:45–12:15
Panel: "The Fog of the System": Navigating Emotional and Infrastructural Complexities in the Digital Age
Moderator: Almira Ousmanova
Patrycja Andrychowicz
(Lund University)
Can an Algorithm Really Know My Emotions? A Feminist Critique of AI Emotion Detection Systems and Their Contemporary Applications.
Denis Petrina
(Lithuanian Culture Research Institute / European Humanities University)
The Waning of Affect in the Age of Cognitive Digital Automation
Antonina Stebur
(European Humanities University)
Mapping the Invisible: Techniques for Uncovering Infrastructural Networks and Extractivist Practices
12:15–12:30
Break
12:30–14:00
Panel: Im/Possible of Resistance: Emotions, Data & Solidarity
Moderator: Denis Petrina
Ekaterina Markovich
(University of Turku)
Chilling Effect of International Legal Practice: Detachment as an Emotion that Makes Individuals Resign from Power Struggle on Their Personal Data
Hye Min OH
(Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen)
Three Scenes of Anxiety: Activating Alarms, Building Safe Spaces and Solidarity. Focusing on Feminism in South Korea 2016-2025
Olena Syaivo Dmytryk
(University of Cambridge)
Webbing of Gender: Trans* Internet in Ukraine and Beyond
14:00–15:30
Break
15:30–17:00
Panel: “While you are looking at me”. Film, Gaze and Emotions
Moderator: Antonina Stebur
Almira Ousmanova
(European Humanities University)
Not for Pleasure: Cinematic Experience and Feminist Experimentation with Film Form
Barbara Kremser / Barbara Ungepflegt
(University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna)
Tears don’t lie (they say)
Olga Kirillova
(Minsk)
“While you are looking at me”. Artistic talk and presentation
Wiith Tania Arcimovich
17:00–17:15
Break
17:15–19:00
Keynote Lecture: Fighting Patriarchy 4.0: Gender-Based Violence in the Age of Digital Capitalism, and How to Resist
Lilia Giugni
(University of Cambridge)
The dominant societal logics of patriarchy and capitalism have long intersected in human history. Today, we observe their deep embedment in gendered processes of digital technology production, use, and distribution. Drawing on feminist interpretive methodologies and the diverse, real-life experiences of digital gender-based violence survivors, tech workers, and women lacking access to digital resources, Dr. Lilia Giugni's keynote will explore how patriarchal and capitalist structures shape contemporary, technology-facilitated interactions. It will also propose a techno-feminist perspective on the pathways to ‘taking back the tech.’ From tech regulation and legal personnel training to educational interventions and intersectional grassroots alliances, this keynote will offer insights on different aspects of the fight for digital justice and connect them to broader debates on reimagining and rebuilding feminist futures.
Lilia Giugni is a feminist academic, writer, and activist. She holds a tenured lectureship in Inclusive Innovation at UCL (University College London), where she works at the intersection of gender and social justice and digital innovation. She is also the co-founder and CEO of the think tank GenPol – Gender & Policy Insights, as well as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Lilia sits on the board of several feminist charities and activist networks and is among the organisers of Reclaim The Tech, Italy’s first festival on digital justice.
May 15, 2025
10:00–19:00
11:00–12:30
Panel: Behind the Screens: Labor, Place, and Emotion in Tech Industry
Moderator: Andrei Vazyanau
Anna Juli Somogyi-Rosenfeld
(Corvinus University of Budapest), Kristóf Huzián (Tech Industry)
The Digital Cage: AIification and the Gendered Restructuring of Work
Yana Sanko
(European Humanities University)
On Rules, Time, and Intense Currents. Work in the IT Industry for ADHD Women* from Belarus
Darya Loban
(European Humanities University)
Empathetic ESG Marketing in Tech: Building Sustainable Brands Through Emotionally Intelligent Communication
12:30–12:45
Break
12:45–14:15
Panel: Emotional Mediation. Home and Displacement in Transition
Moderator: Nadzeya Karpenko
Hanna Seliazniova
(Women in Tech)
Emotional Displacement and the Fragility of Belonging. The Meaning of Homing in its Transition
Andrei Vazyanau
(European Humanities University)
Capitalization of Indifference? Gendered Entanglements of Emotions and Resources Among Belarusian Migrants
Tania Arcimovich
(University of Erfurt)
Emotional Labour, Power, and Dependence in Host Communities for Displaced Academics
14:15–15:45
Break
15:45–17:15
Panel: The Algorithmic Gaze: Surveillance, Stereotypes, and the Regulation of Bodies
Moderator: Hanna Seliazniova
Maria Kornienko
(European Humanities University)
Rage-baiting and Gender: Profiting from Prejudice or Reproducing Stereotypes?
Valeria Baravets
(independent researcher)
A Woman Addressed: Gendered Face of Political Subjectivity. The Case of Belarusian Political YouTube-shows
Luana Mathias Souto
(Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
The Rise of Femtech: Commodifying Women's Emotions and Menstrual Health
17:15–17:30
Break
17:30–19:30
Panel: Body Knotted in the Cables and Codes: Artistic Research of the (Cyber)War Infrastructure
Moderator: Oleksii Minko
Participants:
Lera Malchenko (fantastic little splash)
Nicolay Spesivtsev and Dzina Zhuk (eeefff)
Anna Engelhardt
Mark Cinkevich
In the talk with the artists fantastic little splash, eeefff, Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich, we will elaborate on the entanglement of digital technologies, colonial infrastructure and body. The body is the destination of technological terror and simultaneously is the medium, element of the infrastructure, and operational part of the algorithm. During the talk, we will discuss how the body is exploited through digital labour, how its emotion is mobilised through (deep)fakes and how digital architecture limits and enables its sensing and cognition. The artistic practices of the participants engage with hidden but influential events and materialities behind the code, data, and infrastructures, showing how they could be turned against the exhaustion, extraction, and expansion that come with the colonial usage of digital technology. Therefore, the panel will focus not only on the oppression and manipulation of bodies but also on imagining and experiencing the collective (and often performative) forms of resistance t(hr)o(ugh) digital technology.