Research Assistant at the Research Centre for Technoaesthetics
Amelie Buchinger is a research assistant at the Research Centre for Techno Aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. She holds a BA in Szenische Künste from Hildesheim University and a MA in Global Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. After her studies, she worked as a program coordinator for transmediale and as a project assistant at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. From 2020 to 2023, she was a research assistant in the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique at Leuphana University Lüneburg, where she is currently also doing her PhD.
In her dissertation, she develops a media cultural history of digital decarbonization, ranging from the beginnings of double-entry bookkeeping in the 15th century to the current climate visions of a net-zero world in the mid-21st century. Going beyond the popularly discussed question of the carbon footprint of digital media applications, she examines, among other things, how the cultural significance of CO2 is negotiated in media culture, how genealogies and cultural logics of digitality are inscribed in the techno-economic control narratives of market-based climate policy and which alternative media practices, politics and aesthetics are emerging within the contours of a possible post-fossil internet.
- Environmental Media Studies & Media Ecology
- Visual Cultures
- Media and Techno Aesthetics
- History and Theories of the Digital
- Energy Humanities
My dissertation examines contemporary intersections of digitalization and decarbonization, tracing their media historical genealogies, contemporary constellations, and future-oriented visions. In working towards a media cultural history of digital (de)carbonization, it posits that digital (de)carbonization pertains not merely to questions regarding the hydrocarbon energy sources still primarily powering the computational assemblages of digital media cultures and their associated greenhouse gas emissions but also to questions of how the matter of CO2 is mediated techno-culturally and how cultural logics of digitality inform current notions of decarbonization. It works with a variety of empirical materials and case studies, ranging from audio-visual representations of CO2 to digitally enabled practices such as carbon accounting and emission trading, notions of digital decarbonization mediated across climate policy reports, industry whitepapers, and sci-fi novels to alternative digital media practices that experiment with politics and aesthetics of a post-fossil internet programmed according to the logics of the sun. The overarching research question that animates this project is to not only understand how the matter of CO2 is made meaningful culturally but to also ask how the mediation of the socio-ecological mattering of CO2 could inform notions of climate care beyond the current techno-economic logics that inform popular visions of decarbonization in a warming world of still rising CO2 levels.
Willkommen im neuen Zeitalter der Sonne. Imaginationen solarer Zukünfte in Kunst und Theorie der Gegenwart, Exhibition Genossin Sonne, 07.01.2026, HMKV Dortmund.
Kohlenstoff-Erzählungen. CO2-Geschichte(n) lesen und schreiben im Anthropozän, Kolloquium des Fachgebiets Literaturwissenschaft, 04.07.2025, TU Berlin.
Digital Decarbonization Otherwise, or, Towards a Post-Fossil Internet, Colloquium The Disruptive Condition, 28.01.2025, Leuphana University Lüneburg.
Tales of Carbon. Reading Shifting Cultural Notions of CO2 with Primo Levi, Tyler Volk, and Kim Stanley Robinson, Transdisciplinary Conference Writing (Hi)stories in the Anthropocene, 04.-06.09.2024, University of Konstanz.
Beyond the Fossilized Internet. From Computing (For) Net Zero to Digital Decarbonization Otherwise, Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy Media and Cultural Change, 26.-30.06.2023, Haus Cramer, Berlin.
Inszenierungen des (Selber-)Machens. DIY im Web 2.0 und Formen des Making-of, Conference Selbermachen! Informelles Wissen und Subversive Praktiken, 19.-20.11.2015, University of Marburg.
Making-of – Ein Lexikon, Conference Making of. Beobachtung und Inszenierung ästhetischer Produktionsprozesse, 27.-29.06.2013, University of Hildesheim (Project presentation together with Jannis Funk, Mario Helbing, and Laura Hindelang).
After Oil. Post-fossile Energie-Zukünfte in Kunst und Theorie, Seminar, Winter Term 2025/26, together with Susanne Witzgall.
Digital Image Cultures and Their In/Visualities, Seminar, Summer Term 2025, together with Francis Hunger.
Solarities. Die Sonne in Kunst und Theorie der Gegenwart, Seminar, Winter Term 2024/25.
(De)Carbonization and its Aesthetic Discontents. CO2 – Kunst – Medien, Seminar, Summer Term 2024.
(Re)Imagining Solar Futures, Online Conference, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, 25.11.2025 (organized together with Susanne Witzgall).
In/Visualität. Zu einer Technoästhetik der Gegenwart, Lecture Series, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, 28.04.-15.07.2025 (organized together with Lorenz Mayr).
Was ist Technoästhetik? Aktuelle Relektüren, Workshop, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, 10.07.2024 (organized together with Olivia Liesner, Lorenz Mayr, and Sarah Sigmund).
How? Questions of methodology, intentionality, and situatedness in research as a (critical) praxis, Workshop in cooperation with Terra Critica – Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities, University of Utrecht/Leuphana University Lüneburg, 26.-28.05.2021 (organized together with Sebastián Eduardo, Katerina Genidogan, and Judith Sieber).