Amelie Buchinger: “Digital Decarbonization Otherwise, or, Towards a Post-Fossil Internet”
Tuesday, 28. January 2025 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.704
What would a post-fossil internet look like? From solar-powered websites and networks to ‘smaller’ data files for streaming media, in recent years artists and critical media practitioners have begun to experiment with the possibilities of an internet no longer powered primarily by coal, oil, and gas. Situating these media artistic experiments within a longer media cultural history of digital (de)carbonization, my talk discusses these projects as minor media practices. They pose an invitation to consider the transition to a post-fossil internet not as a mere question of substituting energy sources but as a moment to critically question current digital cultures as deeply entangled with fossil fuel energy systems and platform capitalist logics and to envision digital media as embedded in alternative and more sustainable techno-socio-ecological relations that may open up the possibility of networked media practices, politics, and aesthetics otherwise.
Amelie Buchinger is a research assistant at the Research Centre for Techno Aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and a PhD candidate at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She holds a MA in Global Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BA in Szenische Künste from Hildesheim University. In her doctoral thesis, she works towards a media cultural history of digital (de)carbonization, examining i.a. how the matter of CO2 is mediated and made meaningful culturally and how genealogies and cultural logics of digitality intersect with techno-economic notions of decarbonization. Her main research interests include environmental media studies, energy humanities, as well as digital and visual cultures.
Language: English
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition
Contact: Anne Gräfe (anne.graefe@leuphana.de)
Maria Muhle: “Mimetic Milieus und Insectoid Psychoses”
Tuesday, 07. January 2025 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.530
In his early, short and brilliant text ‘Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia’, published in the journal Minotaure in 1935, Roger Caillois investigates forms of excessive imitation using the example of insect mimicry while also opening up a line of flight to the mental state of human subjects and their spatial pathologies. In contrast to the thesis according to which the mimetic adaptation behaviour of insects to their environment is a defence mechanism, Caillois shows that it is by no means an articulation of the instinct of self-preservation, but rather an ‘instinct of self-abandonment’. Mimesis becomes pathology insofar as it dissolves the distinction between organism and environment. At the same time, Caillois describes morphological mimesis as an ‘actual photograph [...]: [a] sculpture-photography or better teleplastic’, as a kind of 3D print avant la lettre. The lecture aims to explore this connection between (insect) mimesis and photography, drawing on relevant Caillois readings (R. Krauss, J. Lacan, K. Silverman) that soften the concepts both of aesthetic and of the subject and thus provide clues for determining a ‘milieu aesthetic’ that proves productive for reading contemporary artistic practices and their techno-aesthetic implications.
Maria Muhle is a professor of philosophy and aesthetic theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She completed her doctorate in 2007 with a binational dissertation entitled ‘A Genealogy of Biopolitics: The Concept of Life in the Work of Foucault and Canguilhem’ in Paris and Frankfurt/Oder. From 2014 to 2020, she was a project leader in the DFG research group ‘Media and Mimesis’. From 2014 to 2020, she was a member of the advisory board of the German Society for Aesthetics and since 2017 she has been a P.I. at the International Doctoral College ‘Mimesis’ at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. From March to May 2018, she was a fellow at the ‘BildEvidenz’ research group at the Freie Universität Berlin. She is co-founder and editor of August Verlag Berlin. Since spring 2020, she has been a member of the DFG research training group ‘Media Anthropology’ at the Bauhaus University Weimar.
Her research interests include political aesthetics, media philosophy, biopolitics and concepts of life since 1800, strategies of re-enactment, media and mimesis.
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition
Contact: Anne Gräfe (anne.graefe@leuphana.de)
Benedikt Kuhn: “Autoteleotechnics. Hypotyposis and Technics of Nature in Kant”
Tuesday, 17. December 2024 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.704
In the “Critique of the Power of Judgment”, Immanuel Kant continues his thinking about the connection between sensibility and conceptual understanding by developing his conception of the synthetic and schematizing powers of human cognition. With particular regard to his concept of the power of judgment, his theory of schematization from the “Critique of Pure Reason” is extended by developing a different, rhetorically grounded notion of symbolic representation, which Kant calls “hypotyposis”. Bridging the realms of theoretical understanding and practical reason, famously separated in Kant’s philosophy, this specific form of representation not only offers a fascinating development of his theoretical aesthetics, but also plays a central role in thinking about teleological causality in Kant's concept of nature. Following a thesis put forward by Werner Hamacher, this talk will show how Kant's thinking in the third Critique connects the concepts of aesthetics, technics, and ends, and how this connection might be fruitful for discussions in Critical Theory dealing with these topics today.
Benedikt Kuhn is a PhD candidate in the research initiative “The Disruptive Condition” at Leuphana university, where he is working on a dissertation on the relationship between sensibility and technology in Kant, Marx and Stiegler. His most recent publications relate to Marx's theory of value as a basis for criticism of contemporary poetry and Bernard Stiegler’s reading of Kant’s first Critique.
Language: English
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition
Contact: Anne Gräfe (anne.graefe@leuphana.de)
Maxi Wallenhorst: “Sex in Decline. Facism and the Attack on Trans Life”
Tuesday, 03. December 2024 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.530
For the international far right, trans forms of life and "gender ideology" function as allegories of global decline. By juxtaposing the image of the "irreversibly damaged" child with that of weakened geopolitical force, queerness, often racialized, becomes a scalable emblem of a crisis of social reproduction. From Male Phantasies to the liberal strands of queer theory, the right-wing battle of the sexes escalating in this arena has often been understood as primarily defensive and/or retaliatory in nature, as a response to a supposed sexual liberalism. Drawing on trans history and materialist analysis, this talk aims to complicate this "backlash" hypothesis in the hope of clarifying how contemporary fascisms operate, with a focus on contemporary Germany and the US: Beyond psychological resentments and demagogic deflection, trans moral panic enables, for example, the extension of racist "great replacement" theories, the escalation of neoliberal campaigns against public education and unions, the further development of fascist feminisms. Engaging with literary work by Laurel Uziell and Jackie Ess, the talk asks: How can queer and trans knowledge be taken seriously without reducing them, in turn, to an allegory of fascism? How can trans forms of life be understood not as inherently decadent (or progressive) per se -–but as a social formation capable of a distinct critique of how sex is lived in decline?
Maxi Wallenhorst is a writer based in Berlin. As a PhD candidate at Leuphana University, she's currently working on a queer materialist poetics of metabolic disorder. Most recently, her work has been published in Berlin Review.
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition
Contact: Anne Gräfe (anne.graefe@leuphana.de)
Ramon Amaro: “The Black Technical Object: A Correction on the Concept of (Black) Resonance”
Tuesday, 19. November 2024 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.704
Workshop with Ramon Amaro, Konstantin Mitrokhov and Erich Hörl as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition.
This intervention addresses the performative politics of difference and ideas of life within a social-technical/ social-racial-technical milieu, whereby an incompatible alignment between perceptible and affective worlds are in confrontation with the spatial-temporal conditions of (Black) life and being as such. Amaro explores how the convergence of difference with the conditions of the world translate “the very instability of individuation” which can be understood as terminus, or alternatively how death “does not come from the confrontation with the world, but from the convergence of internal transformation” or what Simondon calls internal transformation or resonance (Barthélémy, 2015). While death as an end point and internal transformation are usually seen as distinct considerations in Simondon's operation of individuation, I focus on how both together can help address issues of representation, particularly in relation to strict interpretations of algorithmic matters and the release of Black technical being from thought and thereby the imaginary of the heterogeneous subject.
Dr. Ramon Amaro is Senior Researcher for Digital Culture and Lead Curator of -1, the testing ground and innovation hub for new tools, methods and public uses of digital culture at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. His writings, research and artistic practice emerge at the intersections of Black Study, digital culture, psychosocial study, and the critique of computational reason.
Language: English
Required reading: Amaro, Ramon, and Murad Khan. 2020. ‘Towards Black Individuation and a Calculus of Variations’. e-flux Journal #109.
Contact: Anne Gräfe (anne.graefe@leuphana.de)
Konstantin Mitrokhov: “Model worlds: on generality and worlding in AI research”
Tuesday, 05. November 2024 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.601
In this contribution Konstantin Mitrokhov attempts to make sense of the manifold ways in which the lifeworld is mediated in fundamental AI research, paying particular attention to the computational paradigms that aim to simulate (aspects of) the world. Mitrokhov focuses on the specific worldview that is manifested in and through these research practices. He will discuss his recent text, which analyses several technical articles that outline novel approaches to machine learning research and converge on the epistemic rendering of what the “world” is.
Konstantin Mitrokhov is a PhD candidate and scholarship holder at Leuphana University. After researching at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), studying at ArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem and the University of Westminster, he now works on his doctoral project "Games Agents Play: On Game-like Simulations and the Possibility of Generalist Artificial Intelligence".
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition
Contact: Anne Gräfe (anne.graefe@leuphana.de)
Alex Demirović: “Coercion or Discourses. On Foucault’s Extension of Marx’s Theory”
Tuesday, 29. October 2024 | Leuphana University Lüneburg, HS5
In this lecture, LIAS Senior Fellow Alex Demirović will shed light on Michel Foucault's ambivalent relationship to the work of Karl Marx. He was often very critical, if not explicitly dismissive, of Marx and Marxism. But there are also positive references.
Not only according to Etienne Balibar, one key to Foucault's work is his lifelong engagement and struggle with Marx. Jacques Bidet has also attemted to prove that Foucault's analyses can be read as complementary to Marx's analyses.
According to this thesis, Foucault's studies on technologies of power can be seen supplemented the aspect of organization. Demirović goes one step further and puts forward the thesis that Foucault – similar to the feminist discussion – takes up questions from Marx where the latter breaks off his argumentation. Demirović illustrates this at two central points, namely the concepts of discipline and security. Understanding Marx's ideas in the light of Foucault's development can help to resolve the aporias of critical social theory, such as base and superstructure, structure and action, anonymity of domination or intentionality.
Alex Demirović was teaching Critical Theory in the disciplinary context of sociology and political theory at universites in Frankfurt, Vienna, Basel, Lüneburg. His publications are concerned with issues of power, democracy and state, societal relations to nature, racism, economic democracy.
Daniel Nemenyi: “The question concerning machines”
28. - 30. October 2024 | University Maastricht, Grote Gracht 90-92
Presentation at the first „Conference on the History and Philosophy of Technology“, Maastricht University
https://fasos-research.nl/history-of-philosophy-of-technology/
European philosophy has tended to take it as given that, when it comes to the apparatuses that humans and perhaps non-human animals create and use, one should employ the concept of technics or technology. A concept which can be philosophically traced back to Aristotle's téchnē as its ancestor, or at least original precursor. But what if instead of téchnē one begins with the mēchanē of Pseudo-Aristotle's Mechanics? While the Mechanics does indeed initiate the systematic study of mechanical forces as a discipline, its author also seeks to establish the essence of machines as such. In doing so, Pseudo-Aristotle puts forward a notion that can neither be subsumed under téchnē in general nor, for example, the machines that Heidegger depicts as violently enframing that which téchnē formerly revealed. To read with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne's overlooked account of machines, mēchanē in the sense of the Mechanics involves not a mode of revealing but a power of reversal. Its simplest form being the lever which lifts weights that would otherwise be too heavy for human hands alone. Like poetry and philosophy, Pseudo-Aristotle writes that mēchanē is astounding, but in a sense particular to it: in the capacity for the weak to overturn the strong. A twisted logic. Its ideal: the circle. Of machinations and cunning. What might the consequences be for the history of the philosophy of apparatuses if instead of asking the question concerning technics and technology, one asks the question concerning machines?
Dr. Daniel Nemenyi is a Guest Scientist on The Disruptive Condition research project at Leuphana University, Lüneburg, having recently completed a fellowship at the Leuphana Institute of Advanced Studies (LIAS). He works on the philosophy of Norbert Wiener and is currently researching the kybernetes of ancient Greece, the pilot of ships, after whom Wiener named cybernetics. He completed his PhD at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University in 2019.
Nicolas Schneider: “Reiner Schürmann on diremption: from the principle of anarchy to broken hegemonies” (english)
Monday, 05. Aug. 1:00 pm, La Sapienza University Rome
Round table "Reiner Schürmann’s Radical Phenomenology of Anarché" beim XXV. Weltkongress für Philosophie "Philosophy Across Boundaries", 1.- 8. August 2024, La Sapienza Universität Rom
In his late work Broken Hegemonies, Schürmann distinguishes between the destitution of individual hegemonic referents that govern historical epochs and the diremption of this overarching structure of reference itself. The talk explores how this distinction is connected to Schürmann’s move away from his earlier investigation into ontological anarchy to one into ultimate double binds, from the principle of anarchy to broken hegemonies. Nicolas Schneider argues that this shift can be seen to involve a move from an anti-foundationalist to a ‘para-foundationalist’ perspective, from the destruction of hegemonic fantasms to a more complicated reckoning with a topological difference.
Konstantin Mitrokhov: "Between world models and model worlds: on the construction of agency in machine learning" (english)
Thursday, 18. Jul. 8:30 am, Free University Amsterdam
Open Panel at EASST-4S 2024 Amsterdam: Making and Doing Transformations https://www.easst4s2024.net
In his contribution Konstantin Mitrokhov attempts to make sense of the manifold ways agency is modulated in novel cognitive architectures and machine learning practices, paying particular attention to the computational paradigms that aim to simulate (aspects of) the world. Mitrokhov is focusing on the instrumentalisation of worlding (setting up of the world) in machine learning, that is, blurring of the boundaries between the learning subject and its environment for the purpose of modulating synthetic agency. He will discuss several articles that outline novel approaches in AI research and converge on the epistemic rendering of what the “world” is.
Konstantin Mitrokhov is a doctoral student and doctoral scholarship holder at Leuphana University. After research stays at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), studying at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem and the University of Westminster, he is now working on his doctoral project ‘Games Agents Play: On Game-like Simulations and the Possibility of Generalist Artificial Intelligence’.
Nina Beguš: "Generative AI: a new kind of Automedia?" (english)
Wednesday, 10. Jul. 5:00 pm, Centre Pompidou
This seminar was carried out in partnership with the Institute for Research and Innovation, the University of California, Berkeley and the Costech laboratory at the Technological University of Compiègne, in English
Session moderated by Nina Beguš
Guests: Gašper Beguš, Agnieszka Kurant
"Every technology is molded by our cultural understanding of it, including its fictional representations. The very creation of AI systems and our interactions with them are influenced by how we conceptualize AI. How do fictional representations limit our view, and in what ways are they beneficial? The talk will focus on AI and speech. While AI is imitating human speech, it is also producing its artificial speech in a unique manner. Generative AI presents a yet unprecedented, new kind of automedia:self-productive, automatic, and autonomous but also tied to human design and prompts. No AI system is isolated from its means of production, including broader social and cultural aspects. We will demonstrate how the cultural implications of language learning have shaped AI products as we recognize them today. Nina Beguš will introduce a fresh approach to designing AI systems that veers away from the traditional anthropomorphic trajectory. Avoiding external projections can only succeed with enhanced interpretability of automatic and highly generative AI. Engaging in a dialogue with this talk, we are honored to invite UC Berkeley professor Gašper Beguš, an expert on GANs and speech and Agnieszka Kurant, a conceptual artist investigating collective and nonhuman intelligences and the exploitations present in digital capitalism."
Flyer; Website of the seminar series
Julian Jestadt: "Capitalism and Crisis: Why Nothing Changes" (english)
Tuesday, 02. Jul. 6:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C40.530
Lecture as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition
"Although the neoliberal era culminated in the most severe crisis since the Great Depression, we see the surprising resilience of neoliberal thinking and the concomitant state-market relationship. Why is that? Why does nothing change after the Global Financial Crisis? While French regulationist theory helps to explain the stability of the Fordist period of capitalism, to make sense of the neoliberal regulation of de-regulation, we need to turn to the neoliberal subject. The post-Fordist neoliberal regime of accumulation seems to hinge on a depoliticized subject, that is, a subject in constant crisis mode whereas the Fordist regime of accumulation brought about a more politicized subject. This might not only explain neoliberalism’s resilience despite crises but also the rise of diffuse hyperpoliticization."
Viviana Lipuma: "Automedia through the prism of gender minorities" (english)
Thursday. 20. Jun. 5:00 pm, Centre Pompidou
This seminar was carried out in partnership with the Institute for Research and Innovation, the University of California, Berkeley and the Costech laboratory at the Technological University of Compiègne, in English
Flyer; Website of the seminar series
With: Mona Gérardin-Laverge, Hélène Fleckinger, Claire Blandin; Moderarion: Viviana Lipuma. Organized by Igor Galligo.
"L'invisibilisation des minorités politiques est une constante des médias dominants : réduites à des objets dont on parle, à qui on ne donne la parole et l'image que pour confirmer des stéréotypes de genre, de race et de classe qui circulent à leur propos, cette relégation en coulisses coïncide dans les faits avec leur exclusion de l'arène citoyenne. Le féminisme a historiquement essayé d'évincer cet état de fait médiatique en faisant des technologies d'information disponibles les alliés de leurs combats. Après le tract et la presse écrite au tournant du 20ème siècle, le magazine et la vidéo expérimentale dans les années 1970, on assiste depuis les années 1990 à une « troisième vague » qui investit activement les nouveaux médias d'information et de communication. Le cyberféminisme, terme qui désigne un ensemble de pratiques hétérogènes menées par les militantes féministes sur internet, inaugure un nouvel « espace oppositionnel » (Mattelart). Mais la création de cet espace n’a pas seulement servi à rendre audibles les revendications sur la parité de genre, la fin des violences sexistes et sexuelles, la prise en compte du travail domestique gratuit, la remise en question des normes esthétiques et sociales. De nombreux.ses sociologues insistent, en effet, sur ce que l'architecture du web fait au mouvement : les blogs et les vlogs font éclore un expressivisme digital où les agencements textuels, visuels et sonores des profils donnent lieu à « une identité par bricolage » (Allard) ; le web apparaît en outre comme un espace inédit de convergence des luttes - à l’instar du mouvement metoo; enfin, le journalisme citoyen et l'édition participative rendent possible un élargissement sans précédents d'une « base » gagnée à la cause. Mais quel est le prix de cette révolution médiatique? On sait que le fonctionnement de l’espace numérique favorise une prise de parole et une prise individuelle, focalisée sur l’expérience d’oppression vécue en première personne et à une hyper-exposition de la manière dont on la vainc individuellement. Ces opérations sémiotiques se réalisent au détriment d’une saisie structurelle des dominations de genre et de la relation avec d’autres dominations. Il en résulte souvent, bien que non systématiquement, une simplification des débats et des engagements politiques. En interrogeant le devenir historique des pratiques médiatiques des minorités de genre (féministe, transféministe, queer et homosexuelles) à l’âge des plateformes numériques, cette séance a ainsi comme objectif de dresser un diagnostic politique des réussites et des échecs liés à ce changement de paradigme technologique."
Workshop mit David Bates: "Compossible Worlds" (english)
Wednesday, 19. Jun. 1:00 - 3:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C40.606
Workshop with David Bates, Daniel Nemenyi, Igor Galligo, Erich Hörl as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition.
"The writings of David Bates involve a rich engagement with the concept of disruption as a historical condition in the ‘cybernetic era’, from State of War (2012), where he does so with respect to modern political philosophy, to ‘The Political Theology of Entropy’ (2020) in which he creatively re-articulates Carl Schmitt’s political theology through a cybernetics vocabulary. This workshop will focus on his essay ‘Unity, Plasticity, Catastrophe’ (2012) in which he deploys affirmative conceptions of catastrophe and shock propounded by thinkers of the cybernetic movement and its broader milieu. Bates turns the system of thought of our historical condition against itself, and in so doing opens up a space for thinking it with, in particular, the philosopher Bernard Stiegler. Stiegler who in States of Shock (2012) construes our 'age of disruption' to be defined by the unfolding of a neoliberal shock doctrine.
In the workshop, we want to discuss to what extent the space between Bates and Stiegler on concepts such as disruption, shock and catastrophe inheres the possibility to begin thinking of new possibles (or compossibles) in a world defined by cybernetics and conditions of disruption."
David Bates (UC Berkeley): "AI and creativity and the role of disruption in radically new thought" (english)
Tuesday, 18. Jun. 6:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C40.530
Lecture as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition
"Since the origins of AI, the question of creative thought has been an important and vexing issue for researchers. Can creative thought be modelled and translated into machine forms of intelligence? With the advent of generative AI, these questions have only intensified. In this lecture, UC Berkeley Professor Dr. David Bates will elaborate on the reductive approach to creative thought that frequently governs contemporary discourses on artificial intelligence. Drawing on his research about the relationship between technology, science, and the history of human cognition, this talk will discuss the human cognitive capacity for self-interruption and disruption and its quintessential role in creativity.
Dr. David Bates is a professor of the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, focussing on the history of legal and political ideas and the entanglement between the history of human thought and its entanglements with technological and scientific developments. His recently released book “An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence” delves further into the emergence of human thinking as entwined with machine technologies, media practices and social organization, discussing the space artificial intelligence takes in the history of reason. (In his forthcoming book “The Concept of the Political in the Age of Intelligent Machines” Dr. David Bates further works to connect the realms of the technological and political, developing a critical history of the intersection between technology and political theory in the 20th century.)"
Baptiste Loreaux: "From Structure to Singularity: Kit of Construction" (english)
Tuesday, 04. Jun. 6:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C40.530
Lecture as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition
"It has been shown that the structuralist movement was influenced by the structures of communication theorized by cybernetics. It is also well known that many post-structuralists authors insisted on a concept of “singularité”, which seems by definition to escape clear definition and conceptual grasp. But it is perhaps less well well known that the second cybernetics also gave rise to a specific notion of “singularity” (prior to the myth of a technological Singularity). The aim of this presentation is to retrace the logical steps that led the cyberneticians to move from the concept of structure to that of singularity. The point is not to reduce Deleuze to an update of cybernetics, but to show the rigour of this epistemological shift and to shed light on its nature.
Baptiste Loreaux, born in Paris in 1994, is PhD student at the University Paris VIII (Pierre Cassou-Noguès) in co-supervision with Leuphana (Erich Hörl). He studied Greek and German philosophy at La Sorbonne. Through the history of cybernetics, he explores the way the epistemological framework of modernity is altered."
Ludovic Duhem: "Automedias: Rethinking platform design" (english)
Monday, 27. Mai 5:00 pm, Centre Pompidou
This seminar is carried out in partnership with the Institute for Research and Innovation, the University of California, Berkeley and the Costech laboratory at the Technological University of Compiègne, in English
Flyer; Website of the seminar series
With: Michael Bourgatte, Samuel Huron, Tallulah Frappier; Moderarion: Ludovic Duhem. Organized by Igor Galligo.
"L’idée d’automédiation suppose une émancipation de la logique médiatique dominante et de son discours officiel. Mais si le contenu est revendiqué comme une alternative nécessaire, légitime et crédible au nom de la vérité, de la liberté et de la démocratie, les plateformes de diffusion de cet activisme alter-médiatique ou contre-médiatique interroge rarement les conditions de sa conception et de sa diffusion. Cette séance cherchera à mettre en évidence d’une part les questionnements incontournables sur le design des plateformes numériques de création de contenu produites par le capitalisme des GAFAM et les BATX et sur les alternatives open source ainsi que les possibilités et intérêts d’un co-design des plateformes par les utilisateurs. Elle mettra également en question la tradition médiactiviste et sa fabrique de l'information (oppositionnelle et révolutionnaire) pour définir les conditions d'une bifurcation pharmaco-politique où l'enjeu est moins l'appropriation et le détournement, la résistance et la confrontation que l'invention du collectif démocratique par la pratique automédiatique."
Nicolas Schneider: The political history of diremption (english)
Tuesday, 21. Mai 6:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C40.530
Lecture as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition
"What role does negativity play in the constitution and reproduction of our contemporary predicament? How can the relation between creative destruction and a polycrisis with no way out be conceptualised? This talk explores Gillian Rose’s foray into a ‘political history of diremption’, according to which modern capitalist society emerged through and as a specific form of separation between ethics and law. To comprehend the spiralling dialectic that obtains in diremption, Rose proposes speculation on new beginnings."
Nicolas Schneider is research associate at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM).
Igor Galligo: "Digitalization of journalism, the disruption of professional journalism" (english)
Monday, 13. Mai 5:00 pm, Centre Pompidou
This seminar is carried out in partnership with the Institute for Research and Innovation, the University of California, Berkeley and the Costech laboratory at the Technological University of Compiègne, in English
Flyer; Website of the seminar series
With: Jérôme Valluy, Nikos Smyrnaios, Aurélie Aubert; Moderation and Organization by Igor Galligo.
"Le néologisme « collution », inventé par Franck Rebillard et Nikos Smyrnaios décrit de manière convaincante un des effets du processus de disruption du journalisme professionnel, à la fois premier partenaire et première victime du tournant numérique. La collution désigne à la fois une collusion socioéconomique et une dilution éditoriale mêlées. Du côté de la collision, le « capitalisme de surveillance » (Shoshana Zuboff, 2018) s’est développé sur la spoliation financière du journalisme, son discrédit par un « journalisme citoyen » qui tend vers l'automédiation, le renforcement de sa surveillance policière (Pegasus, Predator…) et sa dilution dans le « web synthétique » (O.Ertzscheid). Du côté de la collusion, les journalistes sont les premiers à rediffuser leurs articles, à utiliser les sources et ressources numériques, à ignorer les atteintes à la vie privée et à partager des revenus de publicités individualisées plutôt que de les combattre et défendre des conditions autonomes et démocratiques de leur travail. Comment alors expliquer que la profession s’empresse dans une collaboration autodestructrice ? Tandis que le médiactivisme revendiquait une rupture claire et nette avec le journalisme, il semblerait au contraire que la distinction entre automédiation et journalisme présente aujourd'hui une porosité produite par la pression des nouvelles plateformes de communication du capitalisme numérique qui affecte la profession journalistique ainsi que ses productions. Pour comprendre ce phénomène, nous suivrons l’hypothèse - aujourd'hui consolidée par de nombreuses recherches - d’une nouvelle dépendance journalistique, considérée comme un « fait social » au sens de Durkheim dans « Le suicide » (1897)."
Maxi Wallenhorst: Disjunctures of Sex. Dissociative Poetics. (english)
Tuesday, 07. Mai 6:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C5.326
Lecture as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition
Viviana Lipuma: "Aesthetic autonomy of users of digital platforms: process of subjectification and creation of collective imaginations"
Friday, 26. Apr. 5:30 pm, Centre Pompidou
This seminar is carried out in partnership with the Institute for Research and Innovation, the University of California, Berkeley and the Costech laboratory at the Technological University of Compiègne, in English
Flyer; Website of the seminar series
With: Laurence Allard, Anaïs Nony; Moderarion: Viviana Lipuma. Organized by Igor Galligo.
"Les défis sociaux contemporains nous invitent à élaborer un concept plus exigeant de ce qu’on entend par “domaine public”, et donc à aller au-delà de sa définition purement négative d'un domaine qui n'est pas (encore) dans les mains des grands acteurs du capitalisme. L'exigence démocratique de protéger et d’étendre ce qui nous appartient collectivement doit porter sur notre santé, nos manières d'habiter la ville, nos manières de communiquer, mais aussi sur nos imaginaires et nos mises en récit. Or, à l’encontre de l'espoir d'un “espace public parallèle” (Mattelart) en opposition au dispositif télévisuel, à ses clichés et à son fonctionnement vertical aux débuts de l’internet, depuis les années 2000 la tendance est au contraire à l'infotainement, à la consommation passive de signes et à la production par tout un.e chacun.e de contenus convenus en des formats convenus. La page de l’aventure collective du médiactivisme semble définitivement tournée:en même temps qu'une dépossession des moyens de production et une perte de savoirs techniques, on assiste à l'affaiblissement des capacités collectives à façonner des visions du monde. Le concept de “sémiocapitalisme” de Franco Berardi décrit cette main-basse sur les signes de la part des instances techno-économiques du capitalisme numérique qui en contrôlent la diffusion algorithmique, mais aussi la production à travers les icônes du web (youtubeurs et influenceurs) soumis à leurs contraintes de valorisation financière (audience, likes). Dans ce nouveau contexte infrastructurel, comment peut-on activer et cultiver les capacités esthétiques de l'intelligence collective, qui a montré savoir s'autodéterminer politiquement et utiliser tactiquement des outils du web pour mener à bien ses luttes? Cette question nous invite à envisager une fabrique autonome des imaginaires, susceptible de renouer avec les pratiques de subjectivation sémio-technique du médiactivisme, mais sans les figures tutélaires d’un savoir et d’une compétence esthétiques qui les encadraient. Nous estimons que cette fabrique autonome des imaginaires nous permettrait de nous orienter vers des choix d'avenir et de complexifier la compréhension qu'on a du social. L'objectif de cette séance sera de détailler les conditions matérielles et mentales d'une autonomie esthétique des usager.è.s des NTIC, en se montrant attentifs à son impossible assimilation à un “imaginaire révolutionnaire” propre au vidéoactivisme."
Konstantin Mitrokhov: “Games Agents Play: Game Technologies and the Project of A(G)I” (english)
Tuesday, 23. Apr. 4:00 pm, Leuphana, Room C40.530
Lecture as part of the colloquium on the disruptive condition
"The modern project of artificial intelligence is intertwined with games and game technology. AI agents are developed with the aid of variable and open-ended virtual gameworlds designed in computer science labs. These software toolkits prescribe what is cognisable to artificial agents and what ultimately counts as synthetic general intelligence."
Kultur/Natur, oder vom Wert der Natur
Lecture by Nicolas Schneider in German
Thursday, 26. Okt. 2023 12:15pm - 01:45pm. Lecture hall 3
In Zeiten der Klimakatastrophe werden die Moderne prägende gesellschaftliche Ordnungsfiguren zunehmend Infrage gestellt. Das betrifft auch den Gegensatz zwischen Kultur und Natur. So gilt im "Anthropozän" die Menschheit selbst als eine geologische Kraft, die den lange stabilen natürlichen Rahmen sprengt und die Lebensgrundlage einer Vielzahl von Lebewesen (den Menschen eingeschlossen) bedroht. Die Vorlesung widmet sich der Frage, wieso wir aller wissenschaftlichen Evidenz und "Green Economy" zum Trotz offenbar nicht in der Lage sind, den Begriff der Natur als Gegenspieler des Menschen und als bloßes Objekt menschlichen Zugriffs hinter uns zu lassen.
Zur Funktion literarischer Sprache in aktuellen Mensch-Natur-Verhältnissen
Lecture by Sven Kramer in German
Thursday, 02. Nov. 2023 12:15pm -01:45pm. Lecture hall 3
Untersucht werden einige Darstellungen und Reflexionen des Mensch-Natur-Verhältnisses unter den Bedingungen des Anthropozäns in der deutschsprachigen Literatur. Es soll zunächst gezeigt werden, dass zentrale Gedanken der Frankfurter Schule zum Verhältnis von Menschen und Natur in zeitgenössischen literarischen Werken wiederkehren. Dies gilt zum einen für die Herrschaft der Menschen über die Natur, zum anderen für den Zusammenhang zwischen kultureller Produktion und Natur. Literarische Verwendungen der Sprache suchen innerhalb dieser Spannungsverhältnisse neue Wege - etwa im Nature Writing.
Kunst und Extraktivismus
Lecture by Susanne Leeb in German
Thursday, 09. Nov. 2023 12:15pm - 1:45pm. Lecture hall 3
Ein besonderes Darstellungsproblem extraktivistisch arbeitender Ökonomien besteht in dem, was Ben Nichols "slow
violence" genannt hat, also die zunächst nicht sichtbaren, sich über lange Zeiträume erstreckenden Folgen
extraktivistischer Ökonomien. Zeitgenössische Kunst begrenzt sich dabei nicht nur auf die Sichtbarmachtung der
Folgen extraktivistischer Operationen, sondern zeigt auch Umgangsweisen damit auf. Die Vorlesung gibt einen
Überblick über Weisen, wie Kunst in diese Zusammenhänge interveniert.
Floods, Debris, and Mangroves: Ecological Warfare in South Asian Anglophone Literature
Kolloquium with Hiba Naeem in Englisch
Tuesday, 14. Nov. 2023 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
Landschaft, Medien und Infrastruktur im Anthropozän
Lecture by Vera Tollmann in German
Thursday, 16. Nov. 2023 12:15pm - 1:45pm. Lecture hall 3
In diesem Vortrag geht es um eine medienökologische Perspektive auf unsere Medieninfrastrukturen - Tiefseekabel, Datenzentren und Satelliten - und ihr Eingebettetsein (in andere Strukturen, Technologien, Umwelt). Wie wirkt sich deren Herstellung, Betrieb und Reparatur, wie Pixel und Bildschirme auf die Landschaften aus? Landschaft dient hier als Mittel für Technologiekritik, indem die digitalen Kulturen und die "environing technologies" buchstäblich in der Umwelt, den Rohstoffen und nachhaltigen Energien verankert wird. Auf diese Weise wird die Bedeutung konkreter Orte inmitten einer globalisierten Welt hervorgehoben. Zur Beschreibung der Schäden als Folge von Rohstoffgewinnung und -verarbeitung gibt es den anschaulichen Begriff "sacrifice zones". Ein mit Giftstoffen belastetes Areal etwa finden wir in der Nähe: die Rotschlammdeponie einer Aluminiumoxidfabrik bei Hamburg. Neben dem Ist-Zustand sollen uns auch Zukunftsperspektiven interessieren: Wie kann zum einen das Instrumentarium für Kritik an Greenwashing-Versuchen der großen Firmen und für die Feststellung des "material footprint" aussehen und zum anderen die eigene Rolle im Kontext digitaler Kulturen - weniger Bilder von Essen, weniger Streaming? - im Sinne nachhaltiger Praktiken überdacht werden.
Linke Melancholie
CCS Kolloquium with Christian Voller in German
Tuesday, 21. Nov. 2023 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
Was heißt linke Melancholie? Häufig wird damit der Zustand der gegenwärtigen Linken beschrieben, deren Enttäuschung über das Scheitern alternativer Gesellschaftsentwürfe in eine nachgerade ontologische Schwermut gekippt sei. Dagegen hielt bereits Walter Benjamin (auf den man sich gerne beruft) Melancholie eher für ein Symptom der Anpassung ans Bestehende. Christian Voller versucht, die kritischen Wurzeln des Begriffs freizulegen und dabei insbesondere die "Fähigkeit, sich zu ekeln" (W. Benjamin), gegen die Routine linker Trauerarbeit in Anschlag zu bringen.
Climate Justice. The Case of the CICC (Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes)
Lecture by Radha d'Souza in Englisch
Thursday, 23. Nov. 2023 12:15pm - 1:45pm. Lecture hall 3
Radha d'Souza and Jonas Staal founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) in 2019 : on alternative tribunal that prosecutes states and corporations for their complicity in climate crimes past, present and future. Rather than thinking of rights as individual property, D'Souza proposes to rethink thr current rights regime to acknowledge the reality of interdependency and intergenerationality between human and non-humans in shared ecosystems which must include possibilities of regeneration. In her lecture she will introduce the work of the CICC. Drawing on the cases prosectuted by the CICC, she will propose ways in which laws can be reimagined to prevent future climate crimes.
As introduction you can read the conversation between Radha d'Souza and Jonas Staal on: framerframed.nl/en/dossier/errant-journal-conversation-dsouza-staal/
One of the trials has been recorded: www.youtube.com/watch
## cancelled ## Future Making. Past and Present Futures of the Silicon Valley
Kolloquium with Laura Hille in Englisch
Tuesday, 28. Nov. 2023
Global Flows of Electronic 'Waste' and Economies of Repair
Lecture by Julia Corwin in Englisch
Thursday, 30. Nov. 2023 12:45pm - 1:45pm. Lecture hall 3
Tracing the movements of ''waste'' from the scrap shop back into secondary use industries, I situate e-waste in India as operating primarily within economies of reuse and repair, rather than waste and recycling. Instead of managing waste, India's broad reuse industries are production-based, maintaining and making new things out of a diversity of new and used materials. This view of e-waste from the repair shop (and even the scrap shop) rather than a recycling factory offers a very different rendering of e-waste and particularly informal e-waste labor in the Global South than is presented in policy and popular media. Building on scholarship on vibrant waste economies, I demonstrate that India's electronic ''waste'' sector is in fact a powerful source of value (and product) creation and call into question e-waste as a definitive ''waste'' product and its management in a ''waste'' economy.
Disrupting Democracies. Why Conservatives break bad - and why they don't
Kolloquium with Michael Koß in Englisch
Tuesday, 5. Dez. 2023 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
How could disruption evolve from an emancipative and extra-parliamentary strategy of the left into a (supposedly) nihilistic parliamentary strategy of the right which is deliberately indifferent vis-à-vis the norms of democracy? In his talk, Michael will argue that the epistemic humiliation of conservative politicians is at the origin of this development. Anthropological or anthropocentric humiliations rule out conservative attempts to justify inequalities by referring to a “natural” order. Michael will exemplarily reconstruct one such epistemic humiliation to illustrate how resentment turns into an indifference vis-à-vis democracy.
Myths of Disruption: Programs, Narratives and Utopias of Future Innovations
Conference in cooperation with the TU Dresden, in Englisch
Flyer for the conference; Webseite of the TU Dresden
06. Dez 2023 2:30pm - 08. Dez. 2023 4:00pm. Dresden, August-Bebel-Straße 20
Toward an Aesthetic of Disruption
Kolloquium with Benedikt Kuhn in Englisch
Tuesday, 12. Dez. 2023 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
In the work of Bernard Stiegler, the term disruption denotes a diagnostic concept which aims to describe a critical condition of subjective experience and subjectivation in contemporary societies. Characterized by a remodelling of time-consciousness and perception as well as a severing between the links of individual and collective consciousness, this condition is an effect of the transformational powers of neoliberal capitalism and the synchronizing functions of a globalized techno-aesthetic regime. At the outset of a project which seeks to mediate Stiegler’s theory with resources from the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx, this presentation will discuss how such a mediation can be fruitful and what potentials and pitfalls it might yield. The focal point of the presentation - and of the project at large - consists in the thesis that Stiegler, Kant and Marx provide highly valuable elements of a critical aesthetics of the present. In a historical moment which seems to move us toward a myriad of disruptive aesthetics, the presentation will outline an idea of how to theoretically move toward an aesthetics of disruption which might work as an explanatory and critical toolbox.
Civic Virtue in the Digital Age
Kolloquium with Wessel Reijers (Paderborn)
Tuesday, 19. Dez. 2023 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
Today, a major technological trend is the increasing focus on the person: technical systems personalize, customize, and tailor to the person in both beneficial and troubling ways. This trend has moved beyond the realm of commerce and has become a matter of public governance, where systems for citizen risk scoring, predictive policing, and social credit scores proliferate. What these systems have in common is that they may target the person and her ethical and political dispositions, her virtues. Virtue ethics is the most appropriate approach for evaluating the impacts of these new systems, which has translated in a revival of talk about virtue in technology ethics. Yet, the focus on individual dispositions has rightly been criticized for lacking a concern with the political collective and institutional structures. This paper advocates a new direction of research into civic virtue, which is situated in between personal dispositions and structures of governance. First, it surveys the discourse on virtue ethics of technology, emphasizing its neglect of the political dimension of impacts of emerging technologies. Second, it presents a pluralist conception of civic virtue that enables us to scrutinize the impact of technology on civic virtue on three different levels of reciprocal reputation building, the cultivation of internal goods, and excellence in the public sphere. Third, it illustrates the benefits of this conceptions by discussing some paradigmatic examples of emerging technologies that aim to cultivate civic virtue.
Verfassende Urteile: Eine Theorie des Rechts
Book presentation by Sabine Müller-Mall (Dresden) in German
Tuesday, 9. Jan. 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
Gerichte nehmen mit ihren Urteilen großen Einfluss auf Verfassungsentwicklungen. Wie aber können diese Urteile Verfassungen erweitern, verdichten oder verändern? Und was heißt es überhaupt, rechtlich zu urteilen? Um verfassende Urteile über ihre Rechtsförmigkeit zu erklären, rekonstruiert Sabine Müller-Mall in ihrem scharfsinnigen Buch Verfahren juridischen Urteilens. Sie entwirft nicht nur eine grundlegende Perspektive auf den Zusammenhang von Recht und Konstitutionalisierung, sondern auch eine Theorie des Rechts, die das Urteilen zum Ausgangspunkt nimmt.
Multispecies Relations in the Climate Catastrophe
Lecture von Chiara Stefanoni in Englisch
Thursday, 11. Jan 2024 12:15pm - 1:45pm. Lecture hall 3
The mainstream narrative of the climate crisis is deeply anthropocentric, solely focused on the damages and threats to humans. However, the current socio-ecological catastrophe undermines the idea of human exceptionalism, showing instead how much we are embedded in a complex network of relations with other animals. For example, consider the significant impact on the climate crisis, deforestation, and the loss of biodiversity caused by animal oppression in the food industry. How, then, is it possible to think of fairer and liberating multispecies relations and develop more just practices? In this session, we will explore this question by drawing insights from the field of critical animal studies.
Donatella di Cesare: Democracy and Anarchy. At the source of their repressed connection
Tuesday, 16. Jan. 2024 6:00pm - 8.00pm. Lectue hall 4
There are at least two ways of thinking about democracy today: a moderate-liberal one that considers it as a system of rules and procedures to be constantly improved, and a radical one that seeks to recover its conflictual potential. Grasped at its root, democracy reveals its connection to anarchy. Since its emergence, democracy has put into question both the arché, a power that claims to be original, and the télos, the goal (as Reiner Schürmann had already suspected). What is key is the concept of kratos, capacity, the power of the people, which is necessarily an-archic.
Donatella di Cesare is professor of theoretical philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome. Recent publications include Conspiracy and Power (2023), The Time of Revolt (2021), The Political Vocation of Philosophy (2021) and Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration (2020).
Workshop: Disruption, Verschwörung, Revolte
Thursday, 18. Jan. 2024 10:00am - 12:00pm. Room C 40.704
The Disruptive Condition confronts us with a paradoxical entanglement of rupture and continuity. While figures of absolute rupture have long lost credibility, calls for a break with ways of life and referential systems for the benefit of the preservation and reproduction of existing economic orders enjoy great popularity. This disruptive dialectic of continuity and discontinuity creates increasing cognitive and emotional dissonances that produce resignation but also resentment and prejudice, which find their expression in political movements that take their cue from the fascist movements of the first half of the twentieth century. Faced with a growing rift between the ever-increasing degree of organisation of the capitalist social formation and the correspondingly decreasing scope for humanity to reconfigure its relations to the world, the return to traditional forms of domination and the schemes of identification they afford seems to offer consolation to many. In this, conspiracy theories play a key role. At the same time, we see a proliferation of insurrectionist movements that focus on a revolt against that which exists rather than on identifying allegedly all-powerful conspirators. How do these diverging forms of dissidence, of disruption, relate to each other? Why do some people choose conspiracy theories, others political action, to deal with or change the Disruptive Condition? What is the role of conspiracy in the supposed resolution of the contradictions of contemporary societies?
Critical Worldmaking: Concepts for Radical System Change from Speculative Fiction and the Environmental Humanities
Lecture by Moritz Ingwersen in Englisch
Thursday, 18. Jan. 2024 12:15pm - 1:45pm. Lecture hall 3
The urgency of the climate catastrophe demands a radical break with the habitualized ways in which we have come to imagine, perceive, and construct our relationship to the world. Drawing on examples from speculative fiction and the critical apparatus of the environmental humanities, this talk will offer a range of concepts and contexts that help dislocate and estrange dominant modes of worldmaking in favor of more inclusive, culturally-anchored, and ecologically entangled responses to climate disruption.
Post-Slavery (1806-1886)
LIAS Lecture with Yvette Christianse in Englisch
Tuesday, 23. Jan. 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Room C 40.530
"Langeweile aushalten": Heiner Goebbels und Anne Gräfe im Gespräch
Book presentation by Anne Gräfe in German
Tuesday, 30. Jan. 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Kunstraum
In ihrem Buch "Langeweile Aushalten - Kontingenzerfahrung in der Gegenwartskunst" befragt Anne Gräfe die Kraft der ästhetischen Langeweile: Was können wir von der Langeweile erwarten? Wohin führt uns diese Stimmung als besondere ästhetische Erfahrung? In den genreübergreifenden künstlerischen Arbeiten von Heiner Goebbels lassen sich ästhetische, gesellschaftliche, philosophische und darin oftmals politische Motive dieses menschlichen Erfahrungsbereichs aufdecken, die in einem Plädoyer für das Aushalten einer radikalen Kontingenz münden. Im Gespräch zwischen Heiner Goebbels und Anne Gräfe wird im Kontext einiger künstlerischer Arbeiten von Heiner Goebbels die immanente Logik und Vorstellungen von Zeit als Behauptung einer disruptiven Erfahrung der Dialektik der ästhetischen Langeweile eröffnet und erfragt, welche Formen der Aufmerksamkeit die ästhetische Erfahrung der Langeweile bietet.
Professor Dr. h.c. Heiner Goebbels ist Komponist und Theatermacher, war von 1999 bis 2018 Professor für Künstlerische Praxis am Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, von 2012-2014 war er Intendant der Ruhrtriennale – International Festival of the Arts und von 2006 bis 2018 Präsident der Hessischen Theaterakademie. Sein künstlerisches Oeuvre umfasst Szenische Konzerte, Hörstücke, Kompositionen für Ensemble und großes Orchester, sowie Klang- und Video-installationen, das bei der Documenta 1987 und 1997, am Centre Pompidou, Paris 2000, in London 2012, Lyon 2014, Dresden 2016, Moskau 2017 und vielen anderen Orten ausgestellt wurde. Im Kunstraum wird Goebbels Installation "Landscape 3" zu sehen sein.
Disruption, Technique, World: Thinking the Present with Jean-Luc Nancy
Conference in cooperation with the ICI Berlin, in Englisch
Thursday, 29. Feb. - Friday, 01. Mär.
International conference of the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition, organized by Erich Hörl (Leuphana), Susanna Lindberg (Leiden University), Donovan Stewart (Leuphana), Marita Tatari (University of Patras)
With: Marcia Cavalcante, Anne Gräfe, Ian James, Artemy Magun, Boyan Manchev, Michael Marder, Frédéric Neyrat, Annie O’Byrne, Aukje van Rooden, Oxana Timofeeva, Georgios Tsagdis, and others.
Our time is one of general disruption, in which crisis is the normal state of affairs. In a situation characterized by climate catastrophe, pandemic, war, interruptions to supply chains, and contestations of democracy, the modern Western categories of “progress” and “History” implode. Disruption describes our socio-historical experience, in which break, interruption, discontinuity, take on a very different sense than in modernity: They become hegemonic and begin to entirely dominate the onto-epistemological condition and socio-historical reality. But does the present attest solely to such immense collapse? Or is this disruptive un-worlding simultaneously a transformation, an opening to a plurality of worlds in the ruins of a formerly hegemonic world? There is on the one hand, the very real ends of the world and increasing threat to the possibility of any world; and on the other hand, the undeniable multiplicity of worlds that reveal themselves at present, their coming to presence disrupting the unity of the one World. This difference confronts us, between the technical homogenization of all into a worldless planet, and a proliferation of techniques of world-making. It is at this tension that we encounter the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy. At times, he would see only the impossibility of any world due to techno-capitalist disruption and homogenization of sense. At others, he would attest to a transformation of sense, the flipside of technoeconomic hegemony, presenting a multiplicity of worlds. Are we at the precipice of such a transformation of the sense of the world? Or are we outside any world, in a techno-economic disruption that is no longer existence, but which nevertheless determines it? With Nancy’s companionship, we propose to take up these questions, focusing on the conceptual triad of disruption, technique and world. Through two days of presentations and discussions, we hope to re-think the present, between the techno-economic disruption of world, and the techniques of (re)composing worlds.
A philosophical dissolution of history: the Myth of Year 1
Lecture by Susan Buck-Morss
Wednesday, 21 June 2023 6:00 pm. Room C 40.256. English
Dissolving the history of “origin” stories means unravelling of modernity’s myth about itself. National/religious/cultural traditions are exclusionary histories. Against these conventions of the ownership of slices of historical time, I argue for a communist inheritance of the past.
Susan Buck-Morss is Distinguished Professor of Political Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC, where she is a core faculty member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. She is Professor Emeritus in the Government Department of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. She is the author of numerous books including Year 1: A Philosophical Recounting (2021), Revolution Today (2019), Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009), The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (1989) and The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (1977).
This event is hosted by the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), the CCS Working Group on the Disruptive Condition, and the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group.
Antonio Negri: A Philosophy of Subversion - From the Social Worker to Biopolitics
Lectures by Roberto Nigro and Serhat Karakayali
Wednesday, 10 May 2023 6:00 pm. Room C 40.606. English
These lectures form part of a translocal series marking the 90th birthday of Antonio Negri: a key figure within Italian Operaismo, a participant in the Autonomia movements of the 1970s, and a political philosopher whose work has engaged the thought of Machiavelli, Spinoza, Marx and Foucault in order to comprehend transformations in capital, labour and revolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
By focusing on some of the most important political and philosophical notions Negri has elaborated since the 1970s, this seminar will explore their relevance for contemporary analyses and the critique of capitalistic relations of power. The two papers presented by Serhat Karakayali and Roberto Nigro will be in English. They will be streamed and audio archived along with others in this series at: https://transversal.at/
Roberto Nigro is professor of philosophy at Leuphana University. His book Antonio Negri: Une philosophie de la subversion was published in March 2023.
Serhat Karakayali is professor of migration and mobility at Leuphana University. He is the co-editor of Empire und die biopolitische Wende: Die internationale Diskussion im Anschluss an Hardt und Negri (2007)
Emergency Politics
Lecture by Jonathan White
Wednesday, 3 May 2023 6:00 pm. Room C 40.704. English
From economics to international security, pandemics to climate change, we live in an age of emergency politics. Not only do governments make policy in the name of managing urgent threats, but opponents criticise them for missing the real threats and fighting the wrong emergency. This presentation will consider some of the distinctive problems this creates for democracy, whether emergency politics should be embraced by progressives nonetheless, and how democracy might adapt to these demanding conditions.
Jonathan White is Professor of Politics at the London School of Economics. He has held visiting positions at the Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, Harvard, Stanford, the Humboldt University, Hertie School, Sciences Po Paris, and the Australian National University. Books include Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2019), The Meaning of Partisanship (with Lea Ypi, Oxford University Press, 2016), and Political Allegiance after European Integration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). He was awarded the 2017 British Academy Brian Barry Prize for Excellence in Political Science.
Der Riss in der Zeit, Kosellecks ungeschriebene Historik
Lecture by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann
Tuesday, 25 April 2023 6:00 pm. Room C.40.530. English
Koselleck outlined his theory of historical knowledge in ever new attempts throughout his life. Based on unpublished material from the estate, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann reconstructs Koselleck's intellectual biography and his unwritten book: his history. History happens in time. But how? As progress in the ascending line? Or as a cycle in the eternal return of the same? The historian Reinhart Koselleck has added a third to these two common notions: it is not history that repeats itself, but rather the conditions of possible histories. Only when we know what is repeated do we recognize the surprisingly new: the crack in time.
Der Riss in der Zeit - Kosellecks ungeschriebene Historik will be published on 17 April, 2023 with Suhrkamp.
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann is Professor of the History of European Late Modernism at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2017 he received the Guggenheim Foundation Prize.
Sensing and the Arts of the Anthropocene
Lecture by Melanie Sehgal
Wednesday, 12 April 2023 6:00 pm. Room C 40.530. English
In this talk, I propose to think with William James (1842-1910) in the face of today’s unfolding climate emergency, thereby putting James’ thought to a pragmatist test: what can we do with James today at a time marked by an unprecedented extent of ecological devastation? I will single out two dimensions of James’ work that seem particularly pertinent for thinking through the havoc that extractivist modes of production and habits of thought have wreaked: his notion of experience and the pragmatic method. In this way, I will outline the particular politics of James’ pragmatism and its relevance in and to a new climatic regime.
Melanie Sehgal is Director of Research at the Institute for Basic Research into the History of Philosophy at Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Her work is situated at the crossroads of process philosophy, the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, aesthetics and the history and historiography of philosophy. She is the author of A Situated Metaphysics. Empiricism and Speculation in William James and Alfred North Whitehead, published by Konstanz University Press in 2016, and numerous articles on process philosophy, aesthetics and transdisciplinary practices. Currently, she is working on a book on "The Arts of a New Climatic Regime".
3rd TUDiSC Conference: Disruptive Worldmaking: Technology, Design, Art
Conference, Technische Universität Dresden
Thursday 16 March - Friday 17 March 2023
The programme for the public part of the conference can be accessed here.
Geschichte und Geschehen
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Blänkner (Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder)
Wednesday, 14 Dec 2022, 6:00 pm, Room C.5.326
This lecture by the cultural historian Reinhard Blänkner (Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder) outlined the problematic confusion of history, memory and happening and the related question of the availability or unavailability of history itself. Its argument thus aimed at a systematic distinction between history and happening as well as at the question of the historical conditions and conceptual possibilities of a ‘history’ (Historie) after ‘history’ (Geschichte).
Im Schwindel der Unterbrechung. Bernard Stieglers Denken des komputationalen Nihilismus
Lecture by Erich Hörl (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
Wednesday, 16 Nov 2022, 6:00 pm, Room C 5.326
This lecture by Erich Hörl (Leuphana University) reconstructs Bernard Stiegler’s disruptive thinking. Stiegler has uncovered being-in-disruption as the key determinant of contemporary computational nihilism. This is the historical-theoretical core of his far-reaching philosophical-diagnostic effort. Hörl argues that Stiegler’s thought proves itself to be an expression of the prevalent socio-historical experience that perceives our time as essentially crisis-like, interrupted, disturbed – and whose social constitution can be developed as ‘the disruptive condition’ to which we are subject.
Geschichtstheoretische Konsultationen I: Zur Genese und Reichweite der Frage geschichtlicher Erfahrung
Workshop with Prof. Dr. Christian Geulen (University Koblenz-Landau) and PD Dr. Falko Schmieder (Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin)
Tuesday 8 Nov 2022, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm, Room C 5.236
This workshop with the historians Falko Schmieder (Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur und Kulturfoschung) and Christian Geulen (Universität Koblenz, Landau) addressed the central historico-theoretical questions that have arisen in the course of conceptualizing ‘the disruptive condition’.
Contact: anne.graefe@leuphana.de