e-flux privacy policy

e-flux takes the protection of your personal data very seriously and strictly adheres to the applicable data protection laws, in particular to the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) (hereinafter referred to as “GDPR”).

Our digital services may contain links to other websites of third party service providers to which this data protection declaration does not apply.

  1. Responsible authority Responsible for the processing of your personal data is

e-flux 311 East Broadway New York, NY 10002, USA

If you have any questions regarding data protection, please contact us at the above-mentioned postal address, with the addition “data protection” or at the e-mail address dataprivacy ​at​ e-flux.com.

  1. Purposes of the processing of personal data The use of our website is usually possible without providing personal data. Personal data, such as names, addresses or e-mail addresses are always provided on a voluntary basis if possible. These data will not be passed on to third parties without your express consent, with the exception of the service providers named below, who support us in providing our services.

2.1. Communication data

We process your communication data (name, e-mail address) in order to be able to contact you. Personal data that you provide to us by e-mail and/or via the contact form on this website will only be processed for correspondence with you or only for the purpose for which you have made the data available to us.

The basis for this data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR, which permits the processing of data for the fulfilment of a contract or pre-contractual measures.

2.2. Newsletter/ e-flux announcements

e-flux operates newsletters on arts and architecture (hereinafter referred to as “e-flux announcements”), which are direct e-mailings of text and image press releases, sent several times a day. With your consent you can subscribe to e-flux announcements. The main topics of the respective e-flux announcement are specified in the declaration of consent. If you would like to subscribe to e-flux announcements, we require an e-mail address from you as well as information that allows us to verify that you are the owner of the e-mail address provided and that you agree to receive the respective e-flux announcement. For this purpose, we will send you an e-mail to the specified e-mail address with a confirmation link (double-opt-in). If you do not confirm your registration within 72 hours, your information will be automatically deleted after one month.

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The data will be processed on the basis of your consent pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR. You can revoke your consent at any time. The lawfulness of the data processing processes already carried out remains unaffected by the revocation.

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Google Analytics is used and Google cookies are stored and evaluated for statistical purposes on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. We have a legitimate interest in analyzing user behavior in order to optimize our services.

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We use Pingdom for statistical purposes on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. We have a legitimate interest in analyzing user behavior in order to optimize our services.

2.5. Data processing for the fulfilment of legal obligations

In addition, we may process your data to fulfil legal obligations (e.g. regulatory requirements, commercial and tax storage and proof obligations).

The basis for data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. c GDPR, which permits processing for the fulfilment of a legal obligation.

2.6. Log files

Whenever our websites are accessed, usage data is transmitted through the respective Internet browser and stored in log files, the so-called server log files. The data records stored in this way contain the following data: Date and time of access, name of the page accessed, shortened IP address, referrer URL (originating URL from which you accessed the website), the amount of data transferred, as well as product and version information of the browser used. The shortened IP addresses of the visitors are deleted or made anonymous after the end of use.

The basis for data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR, which permits the processing of data to protect the legitimate interests of the data controller, provided that the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject do not prevail.

  1. Data security Your personal data is transmitted encrypted. This applies to your communication data if you use our contact form and when registering for e-flux announcements. We use the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) coding system. Furthermore, we protect our websites and other systems through technical and organizational measures against loss, destruction, access, modification or distribution of your data by unauthorized persons.

  2. Categories of receipt of personal data Insofar as we make use of the services of third parties to carry out our services, we process personal data according to the provisions of the GDPR. Service providers who support us in providing our services to you are the it-service providers, hosting providers and e-mail service providers.

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iam privacy policy

Information on personal data: Joining the recruitment process means that Participants agree to the processing and use of personal data for promotion and information about the Program, following the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of individuals in connection with the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and repealing Directive 95/46 / EC (GDPR). In connection with art. 13 GDPR, the Institute informs that:

The controllers of personal data are: The Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM) based in Warsaw (00-560) ul. Mokotowska 25 Contact details of the Data Protection Officer: IAM: ul. Mokotowska 25, 00-560 Warsaw, e-mail address: odo@iam.pl

Participants' data are processed based on: Article. 6 clause 1 lit. f GDPR — based on the legitimate interest of IAM, which is the implementation of IAM’s statutory activity through the promotion and support of Polish culture abroad — to conduct recruitment and select qualified applicants, and to provide access in the manner specified in separate provisions regarding the provision of public information; Art. 6 clause 1 lit. b GDPR — to conclude a contract with the Artist. Art. 6 clause 1 lit. a GDPR — to use the name and surname of the Artist for the promotion of residences and the IAM statutory activity during the recruitment and residential project.

Personal data will be processed until the completion of the recruitment or residential project or withdrawal of consent for further data processing by the data subject. The consent may be withdrawn at any time before the recruitment is resolved, without affecting the lawfulness of the processing carried out before the withdrawal of consent, by sending relevant information to the addresses indicated above, whereby withdrawing consent during recruitment is tantamount to resignation from participation in the recruitment.

e) After the purpose of processing has ceased, personal data will be stored for archival purposes for the period resulting from the provisions of the Act of 14 July 1983 on the national archive resource and archives and regulations issued on the basis thereof in force at the residence organizers,

f) Recipients of Participants' data will be entities providing service of IT systems and software, external entities providing services to residence organizers, and entities authorized to obtain personal data based on legal provisions (including public administration bodies).

g) Data will not be transferred to a third country or an international organization.

h) The data subject has the right to control data processing as specified in art. 15-16 GDPR, in particular the right to access and rectify your data, and art. 17 and 18 GDPR — the right to delete and limit processing — if they apply.

i) Personal data will not be processed in an automated manner that will affect decisions that may have legal effects or similarly significantly affect them. The data will not be profiled.

j) The participant has the right to complain about the supervisory body at the following address: President of the Office for Personal Data Protection ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warsaw

The untranslatable: Miracle, oblivion, affect
Ed Keller
Carla Leitão
10.11.2020

In this seminar — as Lem does in important parts of his work — we approach the key question of translation as an ontological foundation — not only of relations between humans and the alien, but also human to human, and broadly speaking, as translatability constitutes universal system-to-system information and energy flow.

Case studies from Lem and other source texts, films and sound help us to discuss, unpack, and explore the implications of universal languages, perfect codecs, or partial or absolute untranslatability — both for the foundation of a (cosmo)polity, and also for the ways we can understand mind, biology, organism, technology, society — in our human framework, and cosmologically.

SOLARIS, Soderbergh / Lem
SOLARIS, Soderbergh / Lem

The Untranslatable: Miracle, Oblivion, Artifact poses three provisional starting points thematically to respond to the problem of the untranslatable and to propose general models for systems.

‘Miracles’ take place — optimistically construed — when some form of communication leaps the gap between/within systems (eg, physics, mathematics, culture, ecologies) and sparks innovation, radical change or new life and intelligence.

‘Oblivion’ might be an unfortunate consequence of a lack of communication (translation) or an excess of communication — but might also be the vast universal time space within which all of the smaller interactions of artifact and material take place — the tableau of all possible interactions, from which remembering as a thinly sliced concept may emerge; or a condition to be resisted; or a ‘sleep, perchance to dream’ to be sought out…

The ‘Artifact’ is an object, a device, a component or subroutine of a system, a connective network even — which might catalyze various forms of translation, or perhaps remain untranslatable yet indexically charged, indicating that a gesture had taken place, operating and persisting for millions, perhaps billions of years.

Translation is at the center of… everything. Information flow via language, of course, but also chemical processes, energy flow, matter in transformation: all is translation. This seminar tests the hypothesis that in Lem, we find different models and consequences of translation, enabling us to construct something like a general system of models which may then be applied across disciplines to work aesthetically, politically, for us as designers ‘intending’ certain outcomes. This enterprise is fraught with traps and uncertainty.

For example, a universal question occupies the ending of Lem’s Solaris: was there communication? Was there a ‘gesture’ — a communication of a communicability, to riff on Agamben — between the station’s scientists, Kelvin, and the ocean? (this is unpacked quite differently in Tarkovsky’s and Soderbergh’s films, which each have their own ur-mystical and trans-anthropocentric frames within which communication might be understood to have taken place)

Or in Lem’s The Invincible, a psychological / cultural / linguistic exchange is quite out of the scope of any exchange, and the only likely communication between the alien intelligence on planet Regis III and the humans occur at the molecular and energetic levels — thus resulting in death… oblivion… for the human explorers. This is as well a form of translation, without question, and it has mortal consequences for humans — and possibly the alien intelligence as well. It may be impossible to judge, and Lem’s work occupies that position of uncertainty.

GOAL/OUTCOMES
As well as holding three weekly discussion groups, the seminar will work toward production of speculative texts, scripts, art objects, short videos, virtual environments, designed artifacts / objects / spaces; diagrams, languages or notational systems… potentially sited within short films or audiovisual materials which can be edited together into a ‘compilation film’ documentation.

The seminar will aspire to produce a video life-form with a cosmological soundtrack. Perhaps with captions and subtitles.

about the faculty

Ed Keller is a designer, professor, writer, musician, multimedia artist, and independent scholar.

Carla Leitão is an architect, professor, and writer.

SESSION 1

MIRACLE — 10.11.2020

‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
A.C. Clarke

We engage the potential of communication triggered by the ‘extraordinary’ by looking at concepts of ‘miracle’ and ‘design’ in Lem’s Summa Technologiae, and the apparitions in Solaris. Lem’s meditations on possible theories of the yet-unknown or unexplainable manifestations are compared with other authors/artists’ quests to assign the stamp of intelligence or logic to ineffable/unexplained phenomena.

Feedback loops that bootstrap. Arrival, Villeneuve; Mirror, Tarkovsky; the three versions of Solaris. Discognition, Shaviro (excerpts), excerpts from Summa Technologiae, Lem.

Additional readings and films TBA.

session 2

OBLIVION — 17.11.2020

We will discuss strategies of resistance to the forgetfulness/amnesia found in scenarios of oblivion by surveying Lem’s scientific optimisms and pessimisms in Summa Technologiae and the inchoate destruction in The Invincible. Pragmatic techniques for remembrance or system-stability across deep time scales are counterposed with futurecast scenarios of societal organization. Degrees and kinds of intelligence produced by feedback and communication stacks are compared and assessed.

Solaris if seen as zero communication; The Invincible, Lem; Nora Khan on superintelligence; Thalience, Schroeder; ‘massive addressability’, Witmore; Dune, Herbert; Three Body trilogy (excerpts), Cixin Liu; Hardscrapple Frontier, Cosmic Commons, Hanson.

Additional readings and films TBA.

SESSION 3

ARTIFACT (the game changer) — 24.11.2020

We compare artifacts as bodies of memory storage, and forensics as a reverse-design act of logic invention. Alien life form case studies from Lem’s Invincible, Solaris’ rhythms of communication, and Summa Technologiae’s “Phantomology” and “Bionics and Biocybernetics” are seen through the lens of ‘hyper-sentience’ and the ‘sentient relic’.

Ecosystems are theorized as nested subroutines of ‘artifacts’ in tight feedback loops with each other. Abductive reasoning (the ‘Stalker’), material computations, and language itself are evaluated as artifacts.


The ‘damaged gift’. Extraterrestrial Languages, Oberhaus; revisit Arrival; A Million Years of Music, Tomlinson (landscape as layered artifact); Discognition, Shaviro, (excerpts, 22 theses); Gesture and Speech, Leroi-Gourhan; Agamben; Terra‐&‐Terror Ecology, Nandita Biswas Mellamphy; Dune, Herbert; ch.1, Appendix; How Forests Think, Kohn (excerpts); Freeman Dyson on gravity/thermodynamics in The Key to Everything and Noah’s Ark Eggs and Viviparous Plants; Roadside Picnic, Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky.

Additional readings and films TBA.

syllabus

TIME, LOGISTICS
Three main seminar meetings will include lectures and group discussion of assignments and work in progress. Additional lectures, film viewing, and readings will be assigned outside class time. Students will upload work in progress each week for group review by the seminar cohort and invited guests. (google group/drive or similar, TBA)

3 hours per session. Tuesdays, Nov 10th/ Nov 17th / Nov 24th, timezone EST 12 PM — ECT 6 PM.

Zoom ++ other tech platforms for document sharing and collective review

----PRE ASSIGNMENT: Please read/see/listen before SEMINAR ONE (Nov 3rd)----

READINGS
Solaris, Lem: chapter 2 ‘Solaricists’
His Master’s Voice Lem: preface, ch. 3
Summa Technologiae, Lem: chapters 1, 2 (Dilemmas, Two Evolutions, Similarities, Differences, The First Cause, Several Naive Questions)
Review: Devourer of Encyclopedias: Stanisław Lem’s “Summa Technologiae”, Auerbach


FILM (viewing access can be arranged upon request)
Arrival, Villeneuve
2001, Kubrick
Powers of Ten, Eames
Solaris, Tarkovsky
Solaris, Soderbergh

SOUND
SPECTRAL METALLICITIES (playlist)

Exhibition

Summa Technologiae began as a pedagogical investigation based on the work of Stanisław Lem and its impact across disciplines: from Literature to Film, Philosophy, Sculpture, Architecture, Technological Innovation, and Computer Science.

The second phase of the project consists of 2 online seminars, taking place in October and November of 2021.


Summa Technologiae seminars are organized by Julieta Aranda, as a cooperation between
e-flux and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute

scroll down

Summa Technologiae puts together three formats: the school, the conference, and the exhibition, in order to address three of the fields upon which the work of Stanisław Lem has been deeply influential: Literature, Philosophy, and Contemporary Art.

Summa Technologiae 2021 seminars will begin October 15th. Each seminar will have three sessions. The participants will be chosen through a process of open application.

keywords
Limits to growth
Film
Psychoanalysis
Outer space
Social evolution
Political tendencies
Architecture
Speculative fiction
Philosophy
Artificial Intelligence
Ecology
Mathematics
Communication / Platforms / Development
Limits to growth
Film
Psychoanalysis
Outer space
Social evolution
Political tendencies
Architecture
Speculative fiction
Philosophy
Artificial Intelligence
Ecology
Mathematics
Communication / Platforms / Development
Limits to growth
Film
Psychoanalysis
Outer space
Social evolution
Political tendencies
Architecture
Speculative fiction
Philosophy
Artificial Intelligence
Ecology
Mathematics
Communication / Platforms / Development

The main objective of these seminars is to understand the extension of Lem’s influence: across time, across geography, and across disciplines.

Stanisław Lem’s work used speculations on technology as a way to speak to philosophy, and philosophy as a means with which to understand technological developments, the nature of intelligence, and the possibility of communication both with other forms of intelligence but more importantly, with ourselves across timespans and distance.

Stanislaw Lem — Biography

In September 1974, the American science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, wrote a letter to the FBI, claiming there was a communist conspiracy disguised as science-fiction literature. This conspiracy was orchestrated by a communist committee, which — according to Philip K. Dick — operated under the name of “Stanisław Lem”.

While of course he was neither a committee, nor a conspiracy; Stanisław Lem was a writer that produced a body of work so vast and so far-reaching, that it is easy to understand Philip K. Dick’s refusal to accept that it was the work of only one person.

Stanisław Lem was born in the Polish city of Lviv (now Ukraine) on September 12, 1921. His family was of Jewish background, although Lem himself was never religiously observant.

In 1951, almost by accident, Lem turned to science fiction. After a casual discussion with a publishing official about the lack of science fiction in Polish, he received a book contract in the mail, with a blank space for the title. He filled in the blank with “Astronauci” (“Astronauts”) and quickly delivered the promised manuscript. Lem found that literary authorities considered science fiction a trivial genre and exercised less oversight when it came to his works in that genre. After the Soviet Union repressed a revolt by Hungarian reformers in 1956, Lem began to write science fiction prolifically. He never explicitly positioned himself as a dissident with respect to Poland’s Communist regime, but some of his works had a satirical streak that might have caused him trouble in any genre other than science fiction.

Besides science-fiction, Stanisław Lem wrote essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology, and literary criticism. He also wrote nonfiction science commentaries such as “Summa Technologiae” (1964), a play, literary essays, and magazine articles.

Lem’s books have been translated into 41 languages. From the 1950s to 2000s, he published many books, both science fiction and philosophical/futurological. Worldwide, he is best known as the author of the 1961 novel “Solaris”, which has been made into a feature film three times.

Seminar
outcomes
include:

  • film
  • text
  • imagery
  • exploration
  • dialogue

faculty

Julieta Aranda — Biography

Julieta Aranda is an artist, an editor of e-flux journal, and co-director of the e-flux online platform since 2003.
In her artistic practice, Julieta Aranda (Mexico City, Mexico) composes sensorial encounters with the nature of time and speculative literature. She observes the altering human-earth relationship through the lens of technology, artificial intelligence, space travel and scientific hypothesis. Working with installation, video and print media, she is invested in exploring the potential of science-fiction, alternative economies and the ‘poetics of circulation’. Her projects challenge the boundaries between subject and object while embracing chance encounters, auto-destruction and social processes.

Julieta Aranda
Benjamin Bratton — Biography

Benjamin H. Bratton is an American social theorist whose work spans Art and Architecture, Computer Science and Geopolitical Theory, and Philosophy of Technology. He is currently Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego  (UC San Diego), Program Director of The Terraforming think-tank at Strelka Institute in Moscow, and Visiting Professor at SCI_Arc, European Graduate School, and NYU Shanghai. He is author of several books including The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2015), Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution (e-flux/Sternberg, 2015) and The Revenge of the Real: Post-Pandemic Politics (Verso, forthcoming 2021).

Benjamin Bratton
Lou Cantor — Biography

Lou Cantor is a lecturer at Academy of Fine Arts In Łódź and member of a Berlin-based artist collective whose main scope of interest is grounded in intersubjectivity and interpersonal communication. Lou Cantor’s recent projects include Dygresje at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź and Oracle at European Media Art Festival.

Lou Cantor
Mareike Dittmer — Biography

Mareike Dittmer is Director of Public Engagement at TBA21-Academy. From 2018 to 2020 she was director of Art Stations Foundation CH / Muzeum Susch, and since 2019 she is teaching at ZHdK, the Zurich art academy. Until 2018 Mareike was associate publisher of frieze magazine. Trained in cultural studies and communication at UDK Berlin, Mareike started working with frieze magazine in 1999 and founded, together with Jörg Heiser, the frieze Berlin office. Since 2011 she is also part of the editorial team of mono.kultur, a Berlin based interview magazine. Over the years, Mareike has been involved with several exhibitions, books, podcasts and publishing projects. 2016, together with Julieta Aranda, she became a chairperson of the 9th Futurological Congress 2016-2018 convening in Warsaw, Tel Aviv and Munich. From 2017 to 2019 Mareike conceived and chaired the annual Disputaziuns Susch. She lives and works in Zurich (CH) and Berlin (D).

Mareike Dittmer
Kodwo Eshun — Biography

Kodwo Eshun is a filmmaker, artist and theorist who currently teaches Theory Fiction at the CCCRP of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève and co-directs the Visual Cultures PhD Seminar at Goldsmiths, University of London. Eshun is co-founder of The Otolith Group whose new video “ZONE 2” was commissioned for the online platform CC: WORLD by the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Their travelling exhibition “Xenogenesis”  is currently on display at Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Canada.

Kodwo Eshun
Ed Keller — Biography

Ed Keller is a designer, professor, writer, musician, multimedia artist, and independent scholar. From 2012-2020 he was the Director of the Center for Transformative Media (CTM) at The New School and from 2009-2020 was Associate Professor at Parsons.

Previous academic appointments include Columbia Univ. GSAPP (1998-2010) teaching advanced architecturaldesign graduate studios and seminars, and serving as the acting director of the AAD MS program in 2001; SCIArc 2004-09, where he founded and coordinated the MediaSCAPES program and was fulltime faculty 2007-09; and RPI, UPenn, Pratt, Parsons, FIU and Bennington, variously, between 1996-2010. He has spoken on architecture, film, artificial intelligence, technology and ecology internationally. Recent seminars at Parsons include Post-Planetary Design, Soundscape, and Designing AI.

Ed Keller
Eben Kirksey — Biography

Eben Kirksey is an American anthropologist who writes about science and justice. He is best known for his pioneering work in multispecies ethnography — an approach to studying human interactions with animals, plants, fungi, and microbes. Duke University Press published his first two books — Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015) — as well as one edited collection: The Multispecies Salon (2014). Recently, he introduced new approaches to chemo-ethnography in collaboration with Nicholas Shapiro. Currently he is Associate Professor (Research) at Alfred Deakin Institute in Melbourne, Australia. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, hosted Kirksey for the 2019-2020 academic year, where he finished his latest book: The Mutant Project.

Eben Kirksey
Carla Leitão — Biography

Carla Leitão is an architect, professor, and writer. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture since 2010: Leitão’s studios and seminars explore the intersection of architecture, urban systems, technology, ubiquitous cultures and immersive VR at RPI’s CRAIVE Lab. She curated and organized the event “Portugal Now” / Cornell AAP Folio, an exhibition of 20+ Portuguese offices with conferences in Ithaca and NYC (2007). Lives / works in New York, USA and Lisbon, Portugal.

Carla Leitão
Doreen Mende — Biography

Doreen Mende is a curator, theorist, writer, associate professor of the curatorial/politics seminar and directs the CCC RP, Master and PhD-Forum, of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève. Mende is co-founder of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin and co-editor with e-flux journal of “Navigation Beyond Vision”. Her research study “Decolonizing Socialism. Entangled Internationalism”, funded by the Swiss Science Foundation 2019-2025, has led to the first curatorial iteration “inter∞note” currently on display at Kunstverein Leipzig.

Doreen Mende
Mohammad Salemy — Biography

Mohammad Salemy is an independent Berlin-based artist, critic and curator from Canada. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MA in Critical Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia. He has shown his works in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works 7 (Beirut, 2015), Witte de With (Rotterdam,

  1. and Robot Love (Eindhoven, 2018). His writings have been published in e- flux, Flash Art, Third Rail, Brooklyn Rail, Ocula, Arts of the Working Class and Spike. Salemy’s curatorial experiment For Machine Use Only was included in the 11th edition of Gwangju Biennale (2016). Together with a changing cast, he forms the artist collective Alphabet Collection. Salemy is the Organizer at The New Centre for Research & Practice.
Mohammad Salemy

Intelligence is a stepping stone on a circular path back to mere brute being

guest speakers

Bogna Konior — Biography

Bogna Konior is a writer and a scholar currently based at NYU Shanghai, Interactive Media Arts department and the AI & Culture Research Centre.

Bogna Konior
Jason Mohaghegh — Biography

Jason Mohaghegh is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Babson College and Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies at The New Centre for Research & Practice. His scholarly focus is upon tracking currents of experimental thought between the Middle East and the West, with particular attention to exploring the concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, madness, futurism, disappearance, and apocalyptic aesthetics. He has published several books to date, including “The Chaotic Imagination: New Literature and Philosophy of the Middle East” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); “Inflictions: The Writing of Violence in the Middle East” (Continuum, 2012), “The Radical Unspoken: Silence in Middle Eastern and Western Thought” (Routledge, 2013); “Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian: The Four Masks of an Eastern Postmodernism” (SUNY, 2015); “Elemental Disappearances” (co-authored with Dejan Lukic; Punctum Books, 2016); “Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future- In-Delirium” (MIT Press/Urbanomic/Sequence, 2019); and “Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark” (Zero Books, 2019). He is also the co-editor of the “Suspensions” book series with Bloomsbury Press, and the co-director of the 5th Disappearance Lab.

Jason Mohaghegh
Reza Negarestani — Biography

Reza Negarestani is a philosopher. He has contributed extensively to journals and anthologies and lectured at numerous international universities and institutes. His current philosophical project is focused on rationalist universalism beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge and advancingtoward contemporary philosophies of rationalism, their procedures as well as their demands for special forms of human conduct. He is the author of “Cyclonopedia” (re.press) and “Intelligence and Spirit” (Urbanomic).

Reza Negarestani
Patricia Reed — Biography

Patricia Reed is an artist, writer and designer based in Berlin. Recent writings have been published in “Pages Magazine” (forthcoming), “Glass Bead Journal”, “The New Normal” (Strelka Press, forthcoming), “Construction Site for Possible Worlds” (Urbanomic), “e-flux Journal”, “Making & Breaking, Para- Platforms” (Sternberg/Merve); “Post Memes” (Punctum Books); “e-flux Architecture”; and “Xeno-Architecture” (Sternberg).

Patricia Reed
Francis Ruyter — Biography

Francis Ruyter works with issues of style and recognition behind image-making, and connects this activity to social and technological forces driving contemporary experience and historical archiving. In 2008, he began replacing his own photographic source material with the Library of Congress’ FSA/OWI archive of depression era photographs, conceptually locating ‘the archive’ as subject matter, in place of indexing his own lived experience.

Francis Ruyter (Washington DC) moved to NYC in 1986 to study art and began showing in 1993. Work is included in The Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Le Consortium, Dijon, The Albertina, Vienna, and many other public collections. Francis Ruyter currently lives in Vienna, Austria where he has produced more than 30 exhibitions of other artists’ work since opening Galerie Lisa Ruyter there in 2003. He was a founder of Team Gallery in 1995/96 -2001. Collaborative work with other artists remains a high priority. He is currently a member of the board of the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession.

Francis Ruyter
McKenzie Wark — Biography

McKenzie Wark is an Australian-born media theorist and professor of culture and media at the New School for Social Research in New York. Wark began writing about digital art in the 1990s, on early internet list servers that brought together new communities of artists, activists, and theorists. Her most recent books include “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015), “Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?” (Verso, 2019) and “Reverse Cowgirl” (MIT, 2020). She is currently preparing a special issue on trans | fem aesthetics for e-flux journal.

McKenzie Wark
Summa Technologiae Program
Who can apply

The Summa Technologiae seminars are conceived for graduate students, with a background on art, philosophy, architecture, design, social sciences and/or critical theory.

Each seminar will accept a maximum of 15 participants. Participants from all over the world are encouraged to apply.

How to apply

Applicants must have a degree on art, philosophy, architecture, design, social sceinces and/or critical theory, or equivalent experience that they can demonstrate.

While it is possible to apply to more than one seminar in the program, the applicants must state their first choice of seminar in case they are applying to more than one. The final decision will be made by the seminar selection committee, and it cannot be contested.

Language requirements

The language of instruction is English.

Candidates must demonstrate proficiency in English by submitting a short piece of writing.