Be part of the problem, not the solution.

I have contributed with a text on political and ecological art to the current Enkunstung Journal. It is explaining why - in days of inflationary conspiracy theories and right wing populism - it might be more productive to examine the problem more closely, rather than denouncing it. For this purpose, I am discussing the works of Hito Steyerl, Adam Curtis and Mikka Rottenberg. You can find the text here.

 

*I do not own the rights of the images re-posted here.

Footage of Alf Hornborg's Viennese Lecture & Workshop in April 2017

As several people have asked me to, I am putting the video footage of the lecture and workshop of Alf Hornborg on my blog.

Technological infrastructures developed in wealthier parts of the world are products of accumulation based on asymmetric global flows of biophysical resources from less affluent areas. Technological progress, in this view, is not so much a matter of ingenious and innocent breakthroughs in engineering as of devising new and profitable systems for displacing work and environmental pressures to other populations and geographical areas. This, I argue, is the essential rationale of globalized technological systems: rather than an index of generalized human progress – the pure, transcendent knowledge epitomized by the myth of Prometheus – technology since the Industrial Revolution is fundamentally an arrangement for redistributing resources in global society. Modern technology requires not just ingenuity and specialized knowledge, but also global discrepancies in market prices. It is thus as inextricably connected to societal injustices as slavery or serfdom.

Alf Hornborg is Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University since 1993. He received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Uppsala in 1986 and has taught at Uppsala and at the University of Gothenburg. He has done field research in Peru, Nova Scotia, the Kingdom of Tonga, and Brazil. His primary research interest is the cultural and political dimensions of human-environmental relations in past and present societies, particularly from the perspective of world-system analysis. This has led him to explore various perspectives not only from anthropology but also from trans-disciplinary fields such as environmental history, ecological economics, political ecology, and development studies. The central ambition has been to examine how specific cultural assumptions constrain human approaches to economics, technology, and ecology, and how such assumptions tend to serve as ideologies that reproduce social relations of power.

Lecture held on 24th of April 2017 at Depot Vienna, Workshop on the 25th of April 2017 at imflieger Vienna
Chair: Kilian Jörg, Bernd Kraeftner

Invitation by the Art & Science master’s programme, University of Applied Arts Vienna, in context of the lecture series “Natura Naturans: In the woods” (http://artscience.uni-ak.ac.at/);
In cooperation with Im_flieger/Vienna, in context of the transmedia research project STOFFWECHSEL – Ecologies of Collaboration,
with differently involved artists and theoreticians, experimenting with structural and artistic entanglements. www.stffwchsl.net

Explosophy - Saturday, 6.5.17 at Venster99 Vienna

Philosophy Unbound will have another of our Explosophy-parties at Venster99. We will have two wonderful live-acts and lena:k and myself will be DJing b2b all night long. I am very much looking forward to that!

//LINE UP//
FARCE soundcloud.com/farcenoise
Oskar May soundcloud.com/oskar-may

//DJs//
lena:k [Maschinenraum] soundcloud.com/alabama_whorley
KLN [Philosophy Unbound] https://soundcloud.com/klnkln

Entry: 5€

Door: 22h
Concerts: 23h

@Venster99 - Stadtbahnbogen 99, Währinger Gürtel, 1090 Vienna
FB-Event

Transdisciplinary Jam Session #3 - this Thursday, 4/5/17 @moe Vienna

For the last time before wonderful moe has to shut down, we will organise a trans-disciplinary Jam Session. This time we will include a fourth discipline to it: dance.
This means you can now contribute in either Music, Image, Text or Dance.

It will happen on this Thursday, the 4th of May 19:30 at moe Vienna, Thelemangasse 4, 1170 Vienna.

Bring your talents, your curiosity or just your presence. Contributions in all mediums are possible and strongly encouraged.

for more Images of the last time, click here. 

Alf Hornborg: Machines as Machinations - Rethinking the Ontology of Technology - 25.4.17, Depot Vienna

I am very happy to announce that - with the kind support of the Arts&Science Department of the University of Applied Arts and Im_flieger - I managed to invite a particularly interesting ecological polymath and thinker to Vienna. He is still mostly unknown in the germanophone world, but ever since I encountered him, I am thrilled with his concepts and am sure I will not be the only one. His way of understanding technology as a vehicle of (material and human) inequalities is extremely inspiring and helps to think of new politics that combine classically understood "leftist" agendas with "green" or "ecological" ones.

Tuesday, 25th of April 2017, 19:00

@ Depot, Breite Gasse 3, 1070

Rethinking the Ontology of Technology

Lecture and Panel

 

In Alf Hornborgs view technological progress is not so much a matter of ingenious and innocent breakthroughs in engineering as of devising new and profitable systems for displacing work and environmental pressures to other populations and geographical areas.The essential rationale of globalized technological systems is thus as inextricably connected to societal injustices as slavery or serfdom. Hornborg´s political scope enables to better understand how social and environmental problems are inherently connected.

Alf Hornborg, Human Ecology, Lund University

Discussion:
Anita Kaya, Im_flieger Artists’ Association
Bernd Kräftner, Art & Science, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Moderation: Kilian Jörg, Philosopher/Artist

In Kooperation mit Art & Science master´s programme, Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien, Im_flieger - independent Artists’ Association Wien und dessen Forschungsprojekt Stoffwechsel - Ökologien der Zusammenarbeit

Love and Hate - Philosophy Unbound #15

Next Thursday, the 6th of April 2017, Philosophy Unbound will have its 15th edition with the title "Love and Hate"

Performances:

- Cléo Tabakian: tba
- Frieda Paris und Lukas Katzer: the    Ballade of _&_
- Georg Eckmayr: tba
- Jad al Mubaraki: BAGHDADI
- Nicole Sabella & Maria Christina Hilber: SPINNEFEIND
- Sonja Riegler und Antoine Quintard: Il faut danser l'amour.

How is our love organized? How do we canalize our feelings of hatred? And: What is love? In (queer-) feminist love relationships we free our desire and seek new forms of relationships. Are we driven by our emotions – do we control them ourselves? Or have the algorithms of Tinder and the social media taken over that task a long time ago? When we like and confirm things, we glide through emotional capitalism that is sparked by longings and emotions without any resistance. Who profits from our emotions? Who deserves our emotions?
Lustful/boring has become our guideline. Love and hatred are lustful, whereas we consider the overtones, that do not directly stimulate us, to be boring.

Doors: 19h
Start: 20h


Afterparty at Celeste (free donations)
music:
- Soundküche (Graz/Wien)
- Luca b2b Windom (Mellow Heat, Wien)

Entry: Free Donation - Suggestion 5€ (we are a No-Budget Organisation: everything will go to the performers)

at Base India Residency

This February and March I am staying at the Base India Residency devoted to art, philosophy and ecology. We are studying Deleuze, Nietzsche, Freud and the Yoga Sutras, research on collective creation of a field from with philosophy emerges naturally and have a lot of time for our individual work. Love from there.

by the way: here is a little guest DJ appearance of myself in Iris Julian's Video of her performance the in/visible club culture project at Explosophy #2.

the in/visible club culture project @ philosophy unbound from iris julian on Vimeo.