Chloe Turner is a writer and researcher based in London, who works internationally.
Turner's long running project Feel Tanks (2018 - present) has employed the the phrase ‘Feel Tanks’ as both intellectual enquiry and call-to-arms, to consider what it means to live under the complexity of capitalism in the current moment. This theorisation expands on what, in the one-page essay ‘Feel Tanks’ (2012), Berlant outlines as the political motivations behind Feel Tank Chicago, active from 2001 onwards, which brought together academics, activists and cultural producers engaged in ‘taking the emotional temperature of the body politics’ (Feel Tank Chicago, 2012: n.p) through a series of collaborative performances, art and collective writing. For Turner, Feel Tanks have primarily taken the form of affect-centred focus groups, drawing on its roots in queer feminist methodologies to ask such questions as: How can we create sanctuary in a debilitating present? Amid such tangled feelings, situated in contradiction, in what ways can communities envision care structures and tactics for redistributing negative emotions and/or re-appropriating them as resistance? How has Covid19 reorientated our individual and community imaginations of the future?
Feel Tanks has been supported as part of multiple British has been supported as part of multiple British Academy / Leverhulme Trust projects (2018-2019 & 2021-2022), AHRC funded research projects (2020) and institutionally supported projects, detailed below. Further projects are currently under review with the ESRC on using Feel Tanks In addition Turner has designed and facilitated over 15 discussion-led Feel Tank workshops and seminars across academic, arts/performance and activist spaces in the UK and internationally.
Research Projects
SRG2021\211073 'Feeling, Making and Imagining Time: Everyday Temporal Experiences in the Covid-19 Pandemic' with Professor Rebecca Coleman (University of Bristol), Dr Dawn Lyons (University of Kent) and Corrinne Van Emmerick (Goldsmiths, University of London). Funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Research Awards 2021-2022
'Queer, Feminist, Decolonial: Intersectional Impulses in the Humanities' led by researchers at the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media at Goethe University, Frankfurt DE. Funded by TFM, Kleine Gender Projekte Fund and Gleichstellungsbüro Fund 2020-2021
AH/S004149/1 'Creating New Social Imaginaries and Critical Democratic Communities in Post-War Sri Lanka through traditional culture and art' led by Dr Kiran Grewal (Goldsmiths, University of London). Funded by the AHRC 2018-2020
SG162969 'Cultures of Consent: Examining the Complexity of Sexual Misconduct and Power within Universities' with Professor Lisa Blakcman (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Professor Yasmin Gunaratnam (Kings College). Funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Research Awards 2018-2019
Invited Feel Tank Workshops, Seminars and Lectures
'Feel Tank: Out of Time,' Moving (across) Boundaries , Q+, University of Cambridge, UK. (22 April 2022)
'Feel Tanks as Method: pace, spontaneity and rhythm,' British Sociological Association 2022 Conference: Building Equality and Justice Now, London, UK. (20-22 April 2022)
'Feel Tank: Feminist Burnout,' MULTITUDE: Festival for Feminist and Intersectional Solidarity, Hannover, Germany. (15-18 September 2021)
'Feel Tank: Feminist Burnout,' Nocturnal Unrest: A Feminist Festival for Theory, Performance and radical Flâneuserie, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. (22-24 May 2021)
'Feel Tank: Disenchantment in Research,' Methods LAB Public Programme, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. (19 March 2021)
'Feel Tank: Lockdown Lethargy,' CHASE Feminist Network Sharing Research and Practice, CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership, London, UK. (26-27 February 2021)
'Feel Tanks as Method: Why We Can't Wait Any Longer,' Centre for Feminist Research, Goldsmiths University of London, UK. (5 November 2020)
Lecture recording set as required reading for: MC53074A/MC71232A/MC71233A: Mediating Violence: Feminist, Queer, Decolonial Perspectives 2020/2021, BA & MA module in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University of London, UK.
'Digital Classrooms: Feel Tank: Impasse' invited lecture as part of 'SO71087A Introduction to Feminism and Cultural Theory (2020-21),' MA Gender, Media and Culture, Goldsmiths University of London, UK. (29 October 2020)
'Digital Classrooms Feel Tank: Disenchantment' invited lecture as part of SO71087A: Introduction to Feminism and Cultural Theory (2020-21) | MA Gender, Media and Culture, Goldsmiths University of London, UK. (29 October 2020)
'Feel Tanks as Method: Institutional Bad Feelings (Part 2),' Sociology Department: RDF Research (invited by Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam and Dr Kiran Grewal) , Goldsmiths University of London, UK. (9 July 2020)
Feel Tanks as Method : Institutional Bad Feelings (Part 1),' Sociology Department: RDF Research (invited by Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam and Dr Kiran Grewal)| Goldsmiths University of London, UK. (1 July 2020)
'We owe each other everything - Transcestral longings and desires Reading The Undercommons (2013) alongside Original Plumbing zines (2009-2019)' Gender and Sexuality Seminar Series, University of Reading, UK. (9 December 2019)
'Feel Tank: Burnout,' Material: Creative Approaches to Research, Bath Spa University, UK. (14 July 2018)
Public Feelings Goldsmiths: Feel Tank #3 Jealousy | Feminist Postgraduate Forum, Goldsmiths College UoL | 29 May 2018
Public Feelings Goldsmiths: Feel Tank #2 Being Stuck | Feminist Postgraduate Forum, Goldsmiths College UoL | 20 March 2018
Public Feelings Goldsmiths: Feel Tank #1 Exhaustion | Feminist Postgraduate Forum, Goldsmiths College UoL | 20 February 2018