Hybrid Ecologies (2016/17)

The notion of ecology is currently in great demand: it not only figures centrally in political and environmental debates in the face of climate change, but also traverses contemporary discourses in the arts, the humanities, and the social and techno sciences, where it intersects with topics including the new materialism, the post-human and the Anthropocene. Ecology in this context can be understood as multi-layered and multi-dimensional nexus of reciprocities between living processes, technological and media practices, the natural and the artificial, information, things, and actants. The lecture series “Hybrid Ecologies” is conceived by the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies together with the Chair of Philosophy |Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

Given the current topicality of debates on ecology, it not only draws attention to the historical alliances of this notion with the concept of “milieu”, which genealogically prepare the entanglements of natural and artificial processes. It also examines the biopolitical reformatting of ecology, which frames these entanglements as power-political relations. In this sense, the lecture series considers ecology as a ‘polemical’ notion, whose multivalence opens up new fields of action and yet, thanks precisely to this openness and vast applicability, at the same time poses problems. Against this background the interdisciplinary contributions to the series seek to explore the political and social effects that a rethinking of community in ecological and thus also in biopolitical terms may provoke, and which consequences the contemporary notion of ecology might entail for artistic and design practices in particular.

Interdisciplinary Lecture Series

A cooperation between cx centre for interdisciplinary studies and the Chair of Philosophy l Aesthetic Theory

Room A.EG.15 (historische Aula), Akademiestr. 2

Time Thursday, 19.00h

03.11.2016: Dark Ecologies

Timothy Morton | Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University, Houston

Ursula Biemann | artist, writer, and video essayist, Zurich

16.11.2016: Queer Ecologies

Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky | professor of media theory and gender studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Elly Clarke #Sergina | artist, Berlin

01.12.2016: Media Ecologies

Erich Hörl | professor of media culture, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg

BJ Nilsen | sound artist

15.12.2016: (Bio)political Ecologies

Ferhat Taylan | post-doc researcher in philosophy, Université de Liège

Simon Starling | artist, Berlin, Copenhagen

12.01.2017: Designing Ecologies

Betti Marenko | research leader in product, ceramic and industrial design programme, Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London

Martin Avila | design researcher and senior lecturer in industrial design, Konstfack, Stockholm

26.01.2017: Urban Ecologies

Maria Kaika | professor of urban, environmental and regional planning, University of Amsterdam

Godofredo Pereira | architect and tutor, ADS7 Studio, MA Architecture, Royal College of Art, London