|
>> Knowledge x Production x Form >>
a conversation on learning through culture practices in the Anthropocene
with Lindsay Bremner, Emily Pethick, Anna-Sophie Springer, Etienne
Turpin & Joanna Zylinska
6 July 2015 7-9PM
Venue: The Showroom
63 Penfold Street
London NW8 8PQ
http://www.theshowroom.org
Event Description
The Anthropocene thesis has become both a cultural cipher for any number
of all-too-human obscenities and a collider of previously staid disciplinary
concerns. So, while International Commission on Stratigraphy and the
International Union of Geological Sciences continue to debate the scientific
merits of a geological reformation called the Anthropocene Epoch, the
cultural meaning of the Anthropocene challenges artists, curators,
designers, editors and writers to locate the social and ethical significance
of this debate in other registers and by other means. The Showroom will host
a conversation to consider how knowledge is being produced through cultural
practices in the Anthropocene and how the forms by which knowledge is
embodied, shared, and relayed can transform epistemic hierarchies of
mediation and authority. Said somewhat differently, we might ask of this
epoch of the anthropos: should we make books? art? should we read? edit?
curate? What do these practices mean and how do they transform as they
encounter mass extinction and environmental collapse? The entangled concepts
of knowledge, production, and form will serve as three possible ways of
approaching questions of cultural practice in the Anthropocene.
This event will also launch several recent books addressing these
questions, including Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin’s edited collection
Art in the Anthropocene (featuring Lindsay Bremner and Anna-Sophie
Springer), Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin’s edited exhibitions
Fantasies of the Library (featuring Joanna Zylinska) and Land & Animal &
Nonanimal, and Joanna Zylinska’s Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene.
While Homo sapiens have shown themselves for centuries to be enamored with
printed matter as a form of knowledge production, many primates in the
Anthropocene are entirely bypassing the codex as a learning tool, moving
instead
toward a mode of information consumption driven by interactive screens,
iterative
media, and ubiquitous availability.
Participant Bios
Lindsay Bremner is Director of Architectural Research in the Faculty of
Architecture and
the Built Environment at the University of Westminster and runs M Arch
Design Studio 18
(Architecture, Energy, Matter) with Roberto Bottazzi. She was formerly
Professor of
Architecture in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in
Philadelphia (2006 – 2011)
and Chair of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg (1998 –
2004). She is an award-winning architect and writer and published,
lectured and exhibited
widely on the transformation of Johannesburg after apartheid. Bremner’s
work since leaving
Johannesburg has taken a materialist turn. Her research project Folded
Ocean is investigating
the transforming spatial and organisational logics of the Indian Ocean
world; this has been
published in Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, Social Dynamics,
Bracket and the edited book
Design in the Terrain of Water (Oro Editions, 2014); Geoarchitecture is
investigating
intersections between architecture, geology and politics and has been
published in Urban
Forum and the edited books Ponte City (Steidl Verlag, 2014), Questions
Concerning Health
(GSAPP, 2014) and Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence (Routledge,
2013).
Anna-Sophie Springer is a curator, writer, and co-director, with Charles
Stankievech, of
K. Verlag. Her practice merges curatorial, editorial, and artistic
commitments by stimulating
fluid relations among images, artifacts, and texts in order to produce
new geographical,
physical, and cognitive proximities, often in relation to historical
archives and the bookas-
exhibition. She was Associate Editor of publications for the 8th Berlin
Biennale for
Contemporary Art. Before launching K. in 2011, she was also an editor
for the pioneering
German theory publisher Merve Verlag. Her previous projects as curator
include EX LIBRIS at
Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin, and other venues, which explored various
libraries as
curatorial spaces. Anna-Sophie received her M.A. in Contemporary Art
Theory from Goldsmiths
College, University of London, and her M.A. in Curatorial Studies from
the Hochschule für
Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig.
Etienne Turpin is a philosopher studying, designing, curating, and
writing about complex
urban systems, political economies of data and infrastructure,
aesthetics and visual culture,
and Southeast Asia colonial-scientific history. He lives and works in
Jakarta, Indonesia.
Joanna Zylinska is Professor of New Media and Communications at
Goldsmiths, University of
London. The author of five books—including Minimal Ethics for the
Anthropocene (Open
Humanities Press, 2014), Life after New Media: Mediation as a Vital
Process (with Sarah
Kember; MIT Press, 2012), and Bioethics in the Age of New Media (MIT
Press, 2009)—she is also
a translator of Stanisław Lem’s major philosophical treatise, Summa
Technologiae (University
of Minnesota Press, 2013). Together with Clare Birchall, Gary Hall and
Open Humanities Press,
she runs the JISC-funded project Living Books about Life, which
publishes open-access books
at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences. Joanna is one of
the editors of Culture
Machine, an international open-access journal of culture and theory, and
a curator of its
sister project, Photomediations Machine. She combines her philosophical
writings and
curatorial work with photographic art practice.
--
Professor Joanna Zylinska
Department of Media and Communications
Goldsmiths, University of London
http://www.joannazylinska.net
Curator of Photomediations Machine & Photomediations: An Open Book
http://www.photomediationsmachine.net
http://photomediationsopenbook.net
NEW BOOK, Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene, available open access:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/minimal-ethics.html
--------------------------------------------------------
MeCCSA mailing list
--------------------------------------------------------
To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1
-------------------------------------------------------
MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education.
This mailing list is a free service and is not restricted to members. It is an unmoderated list and content reflect the views of those who post to the list and not of MeCCSA as an organisation.
MeCCSA recommends that the list be used only for posting of information (for example about events, publications, conferences, lectures) of interest to members or to promote discussion of current issues of wide general interest in the field. Posts to the MeCCSA mailing list are public, indexed by Google, and can be accessed from the JISCMail website (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/meccsa.html).
Any messages posted to the list are subject to the JISCMail acceptable use policy, which states that users should avoid engaging in unreasonable behaviour, or disrupting the general flow of discussion on a list.
For further information, please visit: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/
--------------------------------------------------------
|
