Lecture, Screening

21-22 May 2015

Anthropocene/Capitalocene

What possible consequences could an awareness of a collective sense of ecological responsibility in the era of the Anthropocene hold for our ethical agency and political consciousness?

With contributions by: Keti Chukhrov (poet, art theorist, and philosopher, Associate Professor at the Russian State University for Humanities and Visiting Professor at the European University of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg. Head of the Theory Department of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow); Katerina Kolozova (Professor of Philosophy, Gender Studies, and Sociological Theory at University American College–Skopje and Director and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Science and Humanities, Skopje); Jussi Parikka (media theorist, writer, and Professor in Technological Culture and Aesthetics at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Southampton); Iris van der Tuin (Associate Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University, Utrecht); and Timotheus Vermeulen (Assistant Professor in Cultural Theory and Head of the Centre for New Aesthetics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen).

On 22 May Keti Chukhrov screens her film Love Machines:

“Love Machines questions the dismissal of anthropocentrism, folk, and identity politics of today’s shift to a post-humanist philosophy. The film brings forth the confrontation between the animal, human, and over-human (bio-techno-intelligence) forces that clash in the search for collective sensitivity and discourses of emancipation. On the one hand the outdated modes of human existence fall into the trap of essentialist values, on the other hand the accelerationist ethics cast the majority of people as retarding the technological upgrading of the “human.” Is then, the human an “anthropos” at all, a species with thinking capacities, whose evolutional domination is gradually expiring, or is it an ethical condition that has been a project since numerous revolutions but has never reached its goal? If it is an extinguished realia then the main question is surely the following: What is the subjectivity that would at the same time strive for bio-elemental disjunction and bio-technological hybridity and claim the political event; and is it possible to sustain such a program at all? Who will be those whose cognitive and ethical expectations still cling to the notion of “human”—are they excluded or considered to be a backward surplus population? And would not the dogmatism of the post-humanist condition occur to be as despotic as the “humanist” once had been?”

Posthuman Glossary is a part of BAK’s research program Future Vocabularies (2014–2016) and its chapter Human-Inhuman-Posthuman, which is developed in dialogue with BAK Research Fellow Professor Rosi Braidotti and organized in collaboration with the Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University, Utrecht.

In collaboration with

Suggestions from the archive

Learning

10 May, 12.00–12 May, 18.00 2023

Complaint Making: Setting Up Conflict-Positive Spaces for Community Building Praxis

Vishnu would like to share feminist governance tools (FGT) focused on three of many tiers in community building praxis. FGT is based on the values of equity with an emphasis on creating psychologically safe environments, drawing on the use of consent. Decision-making processes, setting up conflict-positive spaces, and complaint-making as diversity work will form the body of this three-day training. Rooted in Vishnu’s autho-ethnographic practice, this work will explore the power dynamics that impact decision-making processes.

Performative

10 May, 12.00–12 May, 18.00 2023

The Diamond Mind II

In this dance training, the people will use a one-minute film of their own movement as material for a booklet—a sixteen page signature—that distributes their presence, their gesture, as an act of EQ. 

Learning

3 May, 12.00–4 May, 18.00 2023

Too Late To Say Sorry? 

A bad apology can ruin a friendship, destroy a community, or end a career. In this workshop, we will investigate the impact of apologies on our relationships and our worlds. Why and how do we make apologies? What can giving and receiving apologies teach us about values and integrity? Should you apologize for something you don’t really feel sorry for? We will explore conflict and how we like to be in conflict with others. We will dive into our own boundaries. We will seek to understand how honoring limits becomes an act of building (or freeing) better worlds capable of holding so many, many more of us.

Learning

28 April, 12.00–29 April, 18.00 2023

Huisje, Boompje, Beestje (D.A.F.O.N.T.)

In this rare masterclass, retired teacher and artist Glenda Martinus teaches participants a thing or two about painting with Microsoft Word. Martinus shares tips, tricks, and secrets on how to use this software to its unexpected potential as a drawing tool. Participants learn how to draw three basic objects—a house, a tree, and an animal—in a seemingly innocent exercise that perhaps contains more layered social commentary. Drawing the worlds we desire does not require expensive tools or education, simply a curiosity to understand how the monster’s tools can topple the house of the master.