Re-engineering the Future?

Alien Life

RE-ENGINEERING THE FUTURE?

Tate Britain, London

Friday 10 April 2015, 19.30 – 20.30

FREE

All discussions will be held in the Clore Auditorium at Tate Britain 19.30–20.30.

Attendance is free but tickets will be given out on a first-come-first-served basis from 18.00 in the Clore Foyer

Part of the series Speculative Tate

This panel brings together three leading political thinkers, Nina Power, Nick Srnicek (via Skype), Alex Williams and chaired by James Trafford, to consider the ways in which we might think and construct a “future”.

This is surely a task that is an absolute necessity, given, for example, the breakdown of the planetary climate system; increasing wealth disparity, rentier economics; precarity and automation of labour; state bailouts. But at the same time, the future itself seems almost impossible, with the ultimate channeling of thought and action under the axiom of Capitalist Realism: there is no alternative.

The issue raises further concerns regarding “whose” future is under construction? We may rightly ask, for example, if anything can be retrieved from the narrative of “progress” given its alliance with Modernism and Neo-liberalism. On the other hand, the relinquishment of “progress” by the left has arguably left us in a political bind, wherein we have little way of constructing an alternative form of modernisation in a context where increasingly the transformation and automation of labour requires us to think precisely this.

The panel will discuss: Post-work society, automation and Universal Basic Income; How or if it is possible to “think” the future in a democratic way; Whether or not it is possible to restructure the left along the lines of a radical form of modernisation.

Biographies

Nina Power is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Roehampton and Tutor in Critical Writing in Art and Design at the Royal College of Art. She has written widely on European philosophy and politics.

Nick Srnicek is a political theorist. He is the author of Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics and the forthcoming Inventing the Future: Folk Politics and the Struggle for Postcapitalism (Verso 2015) (both with Alex Williams), and Postcapitalist Technologies (Polity 2016).

Alex Williams is a political theorist, working on the relationship between social complexity and political hegemony. With Nick Srnicek he is the author of the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics and the forthcoming Inventing the Future (Verso 2015).

See: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talks-and-lectures/re-engineering-future

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Alternative Worlds

Utopia

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS

Alternative Worlds: A retrospective of the last 111 years

Call for Papers / Art Presentations

Seminar in Visual Culture 2011
Deadline for proposals: 13 December 2010

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 274 (School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, WC1B 5DN London)

This series of seminars acts as a forum for practicing artists, researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual culture who are invited to present, discuss and explore a given theme within the broad field of Visual Culture.

In an attempt to escape the doom and gloom of the economic crisis the theme for 2011 is ‘Alternative Worlds’. The aim is to examine the dreams, plans and hopes, but also the nightmares and fears reflected in utopian thinking since 1900 in the Western hemisphere. What has become of all those possible worlds? How do they reflect their contemporary culture and society and what, if anything, do or can they mean for our present, or indeed, our future? What alternative worlds are engendered by our own times, by the world of 2011 itself? This is, hence not only a retrospective of past utopias and their after-lives but also an invitation to look towards our possible futures.

Looking backwards, we could revisit the Futurist utopia of a mechanical universe based on the principles of speed and technology, or look at the somewhat similar proposals of the American Technocratic Society for a world based on the laws of engineering. Or we could examine the repercussions of Hermann Sörgel’s plan for Atlantropa, a merger of Europe and Africa created by damming the Strait of Gibraltar, meticulously worked out in the late 1920s and promoted by Sörgel until his death in 1952. Or we could look at the architectural utopias of Modernism, at Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, or at GM’s 1939 Futurama exhibit of the ‘City of the Future’ with its intricate congestion-free road systems. We could look at the social housing projects of the 1950s and ’60s – those that were built and those that were imagined. We could look at the many futures inspired by the space age, or at the alternative lives and societies envisaged in reaction to the Cold War and the nuclear threat. We could revisit the multiple Ballardian worlds or the various projects for the future proposed by the architects and artists who contributed to “This is Tomorrow”, the exhibition held at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 1956 and restaged in 2006 at Tate Britain. We could look at the social utopias of the 1960s, the communes, sex and free love as a basis for a new society. We could look at the alternative worlds inspired by the possibilities of robotics, cybernetics or genetics; or at virtual worlds, like Second Life or all those parallel lives made possible by social networking sites. We could look backwards and at the same time look forwards.

Contributions on any of the above topics or on other alternative worlds of the past and the present are invited from individuals working in the fields of art history, philosophy, literary, cultural and visual studies, fine arts, film and media studies, theatre, history, etc.

Artists are also invited to present new (and existing) work on the theme.

Please send proposals for art presentations (200 words plus images) or academic papers (200 words) to Ricarda Vidal: ricarda.vidal@sas.ac.uk ||| by 13 December 2010.

Please indicate which date you would prefer for your talk.

Dates and times:

Wednesday 26 Jan. 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

Wednesday 23 Feb. 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

Wednesday 30 March 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

Wednesday 27 April 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

Wednesday 25 May 2010, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

END

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

The End of Capitalism? Revolution and Repetition

Capitalism

THE END OF CAPITALISM? REVOLUTION AND REPETITION

Tate Britain. Auditorium
Tuesday, 8 December 2009, 18.30–20.00

Kojin Karatani: ‘The End of Capitalism? Revolution and Repetition’
Capitalism may be on the verge of extinction, but it will not end by itself, because states do everything possible to prolong its life. Setting out from Marx’s discussion of repetition the The 18^th Brumaire, this talk will outline a series of historical forms of repetition – repetition in the state, in capital and in revolution – and a new periodization of stages of capitalist development based on modes of exchange, in order to propose a new definition of the historical present.
Kojin Karatani is the author of Architecture as Metaphor (1995) and Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2003) and a founder of the New Associationist Movement in Japan.

Peter Osborne, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy will act as Chair and Respondent.

The Auditorium, Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1
£8 each talk (£6 concessions) or £25 for all 4 (£20 concessions)
Tate.org.uk/tickets or tel. 020-7887-8888

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Don’t Look Back: Radical thinkers and the arts since 1909

Don’t Look Back
Radical Thinkers and the Arts since 1909

Thursday 26 November 2009, 18.30–20.00

On the 100th anniversary of the Futurism Manifesto, join critical thinkers Terry Eagleton, Simon Critchley, Kate Soper, Eyal Weizman, and chair Alberto Toscano in exploring a century of radical thinking and the arts – and debating what lies ahead. The recent Futurism exhibition at Tate Modern reminds us of an age when politics and aesthetics were densely interwoven in an explosive rejection of the past. This distinguished panel will assess the legacy of modernism to ask how today’s radical thinkers might understand the role of the arts at the dawn of the twenty first century and beyond.

Speakers:

Terry Eagleton is Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and author of Literary Theory: An Introduction, The Illusions of Postmodernism and Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate.

Simon Critchley is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and author of The Book of Dead Philosophers, On Humour and Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction.

Kate Soper is a Professor in the Department of Humanities, Arts and Languages at London Metropolitan University and author of To Relish the Sublime: Culture and Self-realisation in Postmodern Times and What Is Nature?: Culture, Politics and the Non-Human.

Eyal Weizman is an architect and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London and author of Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation.

Chair: Alberto Toscano, editor of Historical Materialism, lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and author of The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze.

In collaboration with Verso to coincide with the of launch of Set 4 of Verso’s Radical Thinkers series.

Supported by New Statesman

Tate Britain  Auditorium
£8 (£6 concessions), booking recommended
For tickets book online
or call 020 7887 8888

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Anthropologies of The Present

Tate Britain

ANTHROPOLOGIES OF THE PRESENT

 

Two Talks in the Series ANTHROPOLOGIES OF THE PRESENT
Tate Britain, London SW1

Tuesday, 17 November 2009, 18.30–20.00

Kristin Ross, ‘Democracy for Sale’
Setting out from the controversy over Ireland’s ‘no’ vote to the European constitution, this talk will consider the current global stakes of the more radical form of democracy associated with the Paris Commune. Kristin Ross is Professor of Comparative Literature, New York University. Her books include The Emergence of Social Space (1988) and May ‘68 and its Afterlives (2002).

Tuesday, 8 December 2009, 18.30–20.00

Kojin Karatani, ‘The End of Capitalism?’
Capitalism may be on the verge of extinction, but it will not end by itself, because states do everything possible to prolong its life. This talk will consider the role of the state in this context and the counter-politics it provokes. Kojin Karatani is the author of Architecture as Metaphor (1995) and Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2003) and a founder of the New Associationist Movement in Japan.

Peter Osborne, an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy, will act as Chair and Respondent.

The Auditorium, Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1
£8 each talk (£6 concessions) – price includes drink reception afterwards
Tate.org.uk/tickets or tel. 020-7887-8888

Anthropologies of the Present at Tate Britain: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/talks/anthropologiesofthepresent.htm
Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profiel: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski