Virtual Colloquium: Michelle Christensen & Florian Conradi – “Posthuman, Postwestern, Postdiscipline — Critical Approaches through Design”

In this Virtual Colloquium session as part of the Digital Colonialism — the Dark side of Fortschritt series this semester at the Berlin University of the Arts, Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi will present the lecture “Posthuman, Postwestern, Postdiscipline – Critical Approaches through Design”. The current conception, production and increasing automation of technology deeply reflects a Western knowledge paradigm deployed globally. But there is a multiplicity of ontologies from which the relationship between technology and the world can be conceptualized and embodied.

This talk will discuss projects that experiment with trans/feminist and decolonial design approaches, in order to conceptualise more-than-human technoecologies that attempt to make the prevailing paradigm tremble. This is an attempt to incite the possibility of allowing a more posthuman, postwestern and postdisciplinary paradigm to transpire. The talk will introduce examples from collaborations with fellows, research travels and teaching endeavours carried out in the framework of the ECDF and the Weizenbaum Institute.

Michelle Christensen teaches as a visiting professor for Open Science & Critical Culture at the TU Berlin in the framework of the Einstein Center Digital Future. Florian Conradi co-heads the research group ‘Design, Diversity and New Commons’ at the UdK Berlin in the framework of the Weizenbaum Institute. Combining their backgrounds in political-, conflict-, gender-sociology and design in the form of critical practice, writing and teaching, they attempt to formulate the spaces in between these realms. Their research, teaching and experimental design practice focuses particularly on feminist / queer, beyond western-centric and postanthropocentric approaches to design, using practice-based methodologies and free / open technology practices (critical making, hacking and designing) to illicit critiques and counter-practices.

Please find below the Zoom link to join, which will be the same for all online sessions this semester: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82954605489?pwd=VP3XBDzVogeuQtLWaXbWEFpm9ObxiQ.1
Meeting-ID: 829 5460 5489
Kenncode: 079532