The Posthumanities Hub

More-than-human humanities research group!

Category: Webinars Page 1 of 6

Webinar Thursday 13th April: “The concept of ROMA and posthumanist robots”

By

On April 12, 2023

In Webinars

Warm welcome to The Posthumanities Hub & The Eco- and Bioart Lab Webinar “The concept of ROMA and posthumanist robots”
with Dr. Tanja Kubes and Prof.Thomas Reinhardt

When: 13th April 2023, 13:15 – 15:00 CEST 
Where: on Zoom http://bit.ly/3U4j0xZ

In recent decades, biosciences have re-defined and re-divided “life” (βίος) in numerous ways. However, despite all modifications, the semantic scope of the term has remained largely untouched. The “living” still encompasses the two realms of procaryotes and eukaryotes, the latter further subdivided into several kingdoms (plants, fungi, animals, etc.). Humans may no longer be thought of as the logical telos of evolution, but their special position in the whole of nature is rarely questioned. 

Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence have profoundly challenged the underlying naturalistic ontology. Drawing from neo-animistic and perspectivist approaches in anthropology and STS, our approach of a relational ontology of multi-species assemblages (ROMA) breaks with dualistic conceptions of man and nature and proposes a monistic perspective instead – one that explores the potential of new forms of interconnectedness and rhizomatic entanglements between humans and a world transcending the boundaries between species and material spheres.

Dr. Tanja Kubes is a sociologist at the FU Berlin and researches human-robot relationships. As an expert on socio-technical topics and gender studies she worked as a researcher and lecturer at TU Munich, TU Berlin, TU Graz, University of Vechta, and LMU Munich. In addition to gender studies and science and technology studies (STS), she also focuses on STEM, digitalisation, AI, sociology of the body, autoethnography, ethnology of the senses, anthropology beyond the human, and trans- and posthumanism.

Thomas Reinhardt is professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology at LMU Munich. His research interests cover nature/cultures, new ontologies, semiotics, morphology, and history of science and consciousness.




PH Webinar: Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning vol. II: A Roundtable

By

On March 27, 2023

In Webinars

Welcome to The Posthumanities Hub & The Eco- and Bioart Lab Webinar 

“Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning vol. II: A Roundtable” 

30th March 2023, 13:15 – 15:00 CEST 

Where: on Zoom 

Our starting point for the international symposium “Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning: vol. I” (taking place on 23rd March 2023 in Norrköping, SE) is the context of planetary environmental disruption, slow and abrupt environmental violence, and the ways in which ecological, more-than-human dimensions of death have traditionally been underplayed in public debates.  During the symposium, we emphasise that what is urgently needed – now more than ever – is the systematic problematisation of the planetary-scale mechanisms of annihilation of the more-than-human worlds in their philosophical, socio-cultural, ethico-political and very material dimensions. 

In this follow-up roundtable, or volume II of “Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning”, the panellists: Prof. Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, UK), Dr Margherita Pevere (independent artist, DE/IT) and Dr Marietta Radomska (Linköping University, SE) will zoom in on the potential, role, (im)possibilities, urgencies and frictions of artistic, cultural and philosophical practices and praxes linked to ecologies of death, care, grief and mourning.  

REGISTER: https://bit.ly/3Ll1J1i 

Speakers:  

Prof. Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, UK) 

Dr Margherita Pevere (independent artist, DE/IT) 

Dr Marietta Radomska (Linköping University, SE) 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: 

Patricia MacCormack, PhD, is Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge. She has published extensively on philosophy, feminism, queer and monster theory, animal abolitionist activism, ethics, art and horror cinema. She is the author of Cinesexuality (Routledge 2008) and Posthuman Ethics (Routledge 2012) and the editor of The Animal Catalyst(Bloomsbury 2014), Deleuze and the Animal (EUP 2017), Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema (Continuum 2008) and Ecosophical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury 2018). Her new book is The Ahuman Manifesto: Activisms for the End of the Anthropocene. She is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow researching death activism. 

Dr Margherita Pevere is an artist and researcher working across biological arts and performance with a distinctive visceral signature. Her inquiry hybridizes biotechnology, ecology, queer and death studies to create artworks that trail today’s ecological complexity. Her body of work is a blooming garden crawling with genetically edited bacteria, cells, sex hormones, microbial biofilm, blood, slugs, growing plants and decomposing remains. She is affiliated to the Eco- and Bioart Lab and co-founded the artists’ group Fronte Vacuo. Web: Www.margheritapevere.comand  https://frontevacuo.com   

Marietta Radomska, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at Linköping University; director of The Eco- and Bioart Lab; co-founder of Queer Death Studies Network;member of The Posthumanities Hub; co-editor of the book series ‘Focus on More-than-human Humanities’ at Routledge (with C. Åsberg); and the PI of ‘Ecological Grief, Crisis Imaginaries and Resilience in Nordic Lights’ (2022-26; funded by FORMAS). She works at the intersection of posthumanities, environmental humanities, continental philosophy, queer death studies, visual culture and contemporary art; and has published in Australian Feminist Studies; Somatechnics; Environment and Planning E and Artnodes, among others. Web: www.mariettaradomska.com 

FB event: https://fb.me/e/3rotqKcZG

Artwork included in the poster: Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis (2018)

Webinar: “dialogues – probing the future of creative technology,” March 28

By

On March 22, 2023

In Webinars

The Creative-Ai (AI and the Artistic Imaginary – WASP-HS, https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/cmt/projects/ai-and-the-artistic-imaginary-1.1100143) and MUSAiC (https://musaiclab.wordpress.com) project teams at KTH kindly welcome you to the next seminar in our series “dialogues: probing the future of creative technology” on Friday 28 March, 17-18h (CEST).

This seminar (held on zoom, https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/63477441422) features two artists exploring technology in the context of their work. We start with presentations by both guests followed by a discussion between each other and then the audience.

IMPORTANT: If you wish to join, please send your name (zoom handle) to associate professor Bobby Lee Townsend Sturm JR (KTH) so that you will be admitted.

Guests: Paola Torres Núñez del Prado (PE/SE) and Laura Devendorf (USA)

Paola will talk us through some of her works and performances, focusing on the presence of code, textile, multisensorial experiences, and how her interest in patterns led her to experiment with Artificial Intelligence, all framed within a critical approach to these same technologies and their social impact. She will go through some of the ideas proposed in the Neokhipukamayoq Manifesto regarding the possible development of technologies that are not created in opposition to nature: how would these be if parting from Andean/Indigenous philosophies, and placed within a syncretic, hybrid framework?

Paola Torres Núñez del Prado (PE/SE) is an artist and researcher of transdisciplinarity, working with textile assemblages and embroideries, painting, sound, text, digital media, interactive art, A.I. and video.
She explores the boundaries and connections in between tactility, the visual and audio, related to the human voice, to nature, and to synthetic ones whose listening is often considered less harmonious, such as machine or digital noises. Her work is complex: she explores the limits of the senses, examining the concepts of interpretation, translation, and misrepresentation, to reflect on mediated sensorial experiences while questioning the cultural hegemony within the history of Technology and the Arts.

She is the recipient of the Stockholms stads kulturstipendium 2022 and of the Honorary Mention in the Prix Ars Electronica 2021. She has also has been awarded the Artists + Machine Intelligence Grant from Google Arts and Culture and Google AI in 2020 and was the winner of the “Local Media: Amazon Ecoregion: contest of Vivo Arte.mov in Brazil, 2013. Her works are in collections of the Swedish Public Art Agency and Malmo City Museum.

Laura Devendorf will present a speculation rooted in her experience weaving electronics and developing software for weaving electronics. Laura will introduce the basics of woven structure in terms of its mechanical properties as well as methods by which it is designed and manipulated. Laura will also present some of the exciting opportunities for design and interaction when we consider weaving as a method of electronics production: such as the ability for textile structures to unravel, mended, and to be continually modified. Each of these underlying discussions will frame a provocation about alternative ways we might build, use, and unbuild our electronic products.

Laura Devendorf, assistant professor of information science with the ATLAS Institute, is an artist and technologist working predominantly in human-computer interaction and design research. She designs and develops systems that embody alternative visions for human-machine relations within creative practice. Her recent work focuses on smart textiles—a project that interweaves the production of computational design tools with cultural reflections on gendered forms of labor and visions for how wearable technology could shape how we perceive lived environments. Laura directs the Unstable Design Lab. She earned bachelors’ degrees in studio art and computer science from the University of California Santa Barbara before earning her PhD at UC Berkeley School of Information. She has worked in the fields of sustainable fashion, design and engineering. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, has been featured on National Public Radio, and has received multiple best paper awards at top conferences in the field of human-computer interaction.

Webinar: “Beyond a World On Hold” with Dr. Marleen Boschen

By

On March 10, 2023

In Webinars

The webinar takes place on 14th March at 13:15-15:00 CET on Zoom.

Please register for this zoom session, using this link: http://bit.ly/4034U2H

We are happy to invite you to Posthumanities Hub and The Eco and Bioart Lab webinar on “Beyond a World on Hold: The Ecological Imaginaries of Seed Banking”, with Dr Marleen Boschen, PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London.

ABSTRACT
Seed banking has become a hopeful technology of ex situ conservation in the face of biodiversity loss. Through storing seeds in liminal, often frozen, states, seed banks create valuable living archives. This talk brings together four seed banking practices ranging from iconic global seed vaults in the Norwegian Arctic and the UK to a forest gene bank in Poland and a food sovereignty seed bank in Palestine. It asks: what are these practices saving (for)? But also: what escapes them? I follow the patterns of collection, containment, and cultivation through three carrier seeds as narrative devices: a black bean, a banana wild relative, and an endangered white cucumber to observe shifting, sometimes conflicting, understandings of mastery, vulnerability, and sovereignty. I will suggest that these concepts are produced in practice, in relation to ecological imaginaries of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ that differ in their politics and ethics of saving.

Webinar: “Secret Weapons”: “Non-hormonal” contraception, the pill, and the fetishisation of the menstrual cycle

By

On February 28, 2023

In Webinars

Many warm thanks to our visiting PhD, Anne Nørkjær Bang, University of Southern Denmark. She presented a portion of her research with the Posthumanities Hub and Eco- & Bioart Lab Webinar series in what turned out to be a fabulous event.

Page 1 of 6

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén