Donna Haraway: Storytelling for the Earthly Survival (2016, Fabrizio Terranova)

In the third of the Ten Books on Architecture , dedicated to the design of temples, in the second chapter, entitled “On Symmetry: In Temples and in the Human Body”, Vitruvius incorporates a small, niche-like cavity wherein huddles a being about which we know no more than the proportions of its body parts to one another. The being cannot simply be; it is planned, engineered, “so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth.” And so on, until all the proportions have been defined, but no size as yet.

Thus begins the cycle, some 2000 years before our time – the cycle of human bodies quantified, designed, constructed and planned: in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights circa 1500, the phantasmagorical precursors of Constant’s New Babylon; in 1924, Vertov’s “I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it”; in 1951, Corbusier’s Modulor ; in 1961, Lem’s Solaris , an intelligent being that breaks the human mould, shapeless and boundless, a swaying mass, an ocean capable of materializing deceptively real-seeming reflections of people from human beings’ traces of memory; in 1968, a woman and a man set on a blanket by Ray and Charles Eames; in 1984, A Cyborg Manifesto by Haraway; in 1993, Kwinter’s Figure in Time ; in 1999, MAKEHUMAN – a software; in 2000 L’Intrus by Nancy; in 2003, From Cyborgs to Companion Species, Haraway again; in 2012, The Building of Bodies by Alex Schweder La.

WHAT BEINGS ARE WE , curated by Christina Jauernik and Wolfgang Tschapeller, is a lecture series that chronicles the nature of our bodies circa 2018. After WORLD, VERSION 1 + 2 (2004), HANDS HAVE NO TEARS TO FLOW (2012) and INTRASPACE (2014/2017), WHAT BEINGS ARE WE is the fourth project that experiments with the substances, constructions and manifestations of our bodies in a near future.

23. April 2018 | Getting to the heart of the matter – a scientist’s try
Johann Wojta (PhD, Department of Internal Medicine II and Core Facilities, Medical University of Vienna)
Chair: Eva Horn (Institute for German Studies, University Vienna)

The lecture will present at the beginning a historic overview of the heart as an organ as it was seen anatomically. The function and anatomy of the heart have been extensively studied since approximately 5500 years. Egyptian, Chinese and Indian concepts will be discussed as well as the development of science during the Hippocratic, the post-Hippocratic, the Alexandrian, Roman, Medieval Islamic, and European eras that lead to the discipline of cardiac anatomy. Subsequently these anatomical concepts and findings will be put into perspective with our current understanding of the evolutionary and ontogenic development of the heart and its physiological consequences. The third and concluding part of the lecture will be devoted to major breakthroughs made in cardiology of the last decades leading from the invention of electrocardiography to that of echocardiography and the development of catheterization and stents. A special emphasis thereby will be laid on the recent concept of regeneration of a diseased heart.

Johann Wojta, PhD, is Associate Professor of Medical Physiology, Head of Research at the Division of Cardiology and Head of Core Facilities at the Medical University of Vienna, and he is the Co-ordinator of the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Cluster for Cardiovascular Research. He obtained his PhD in Zoology in 1986 at the University of Vienna and since then has done research in the area of cardiovascular biology with a focus on atherosclerosis. During his postdoctoral career Johann Wojta worked from 1986 to 1988 at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA and from 1991 to 1993 at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. He has published more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals, among which are publications in Blood, Circulation and The FASEB Journal. He has a Hirsh-index of 56. Johann Wojta regularly serves as a reviewer for scientific journals and for national and international grant providing agencies. He also holds positions on various national and international scientific boards, e.g. he is currently an affiliated Nucleus Member of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Working Group on Thrombosis and he is Secretary of the ESC Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science.

Eva Horn is Professor of Modern German Literature in the Department of German at the University of Vienna. She studied Germanic Languages and Literatures, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Philosophy in Bielefeld, Konstanz and Paris, followed by her PhD „Writing Mourning: The Dead in the Text of Goethe’s Era“ at the University of Konstanz in 1996. From 2002-2003 Eva Horn held the Feodor Lynen Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the German Department of the New York University. In 2004 Eva Horn presented her habilitation „The Secret War: Treason, Spying, and Modern Fiction” at the Faculty of Cultural Sciences of the European University Viadrina. From 2005-2008 Eva Horn was Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Basel. Among her publications are „Der Untergang als Experimentalraum. Zukunftsfiktionen vom Ende des Menschen“, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 2012; „Überlebensgemeinschaften. Zur Biopolitik der Katastrophe“, in: Merkur 10/11, 2013; „Klima“, in: Benjamin Bühler/Stefan Willer (Hg.): Futurologien. Ordnungen des Zukunftswissens, 2015; „Temperierte Luft. Der Traum von einer Welt ohne Klima“, in: Bella Triste. Zeitschrift für junge Literatur, 2015.

30. April 2018 | Identitecture
Johannes Paul Raether (Artist, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf)
Chair: Gabrielle Cram (Cultural theorist, dramaturge, Vienna)

The lecture “Identitecture” of Berlin based artist Johannes Paul Raether will introduce three of his “SelfSisters” as “Potential Identities”. Through their bodies and their language the corresponding performance system, which he has been continuously developing since 2008, will be described. The system of “Identitecture” deals with a transformed body in different “skins” where schizological and political analysis of society collapse with language mutations and site-specific surveys.Identitektur provides scalable platforms manifesting themselves through infiltrations, teach-ins, lecture-adventures, selfie-wars, appearances, processions, and rituals. „To engineer oneself into community“ or “communeering” act as prerequisites for the speaking in digitally fractured identities, in techno-alchemic tongues; leading to the resolution of the audience body into a new collective formation, such as the “Repro Tribe” or the “Communitymaschine”. The process of „Identitecture" dramatizes aesthetic politics and artistic intervention techniques beyond itself. Thereby taking an exodus from the narrowly circumscribed field to question the occasionally simple reading of political art and negotiation of its themes. Rather, the aim is to place experiments on the own body against triumphal politicality and heroic subjectivities, finding the fragile moments of “drag” and the residing blurred surfaces and ways of speech in order to be able to expose the vulnerability of non-normative social actions.

Johannes Paul Raether lives and works in Berlin.
His practice traverses various platforms in Performing and Visual Arts as well as in the Humanities by the way of his SelfSisters (alter egos), which emerge at various sites in public and corporate spaces. His works and performances were shown in Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017), transmediale, Berlin (2017) the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016) Berliner Festspiele (2016), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016), Fridericianum, Kassel (2015) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2013). Recent Solo exhibitions include Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf (2017), Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2015) and Ludlow 38, New York City (2014). Raether publishes in Texte Zur Kunst and co-edited the book Zeig Her, Führ Vor, Tausch Ein. Performance—Art—Academy (2013) He received the Villa Romana Price (2015) and was Artist in Residence at the Leuphana University Art’s Program (2016). Since 2016 he is Professor für Freie Kunst at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Gabrielle Cram , born in Falkirk/Scotland, is a cultural worker based in Vienna, Austria. The engagement in transdisciplinary fields and practices of translation - between genres, spaces, times, locations, languages – takes an important role in her work. Her practice is marked by diverse forms of mediation such as the creation of spaces for negotiation and contact zones for still open processes. She works as a dramaturge, curator and cultural mediator. Until recently she was working as head of dramaturgy and research at choreographic centre and venue for contemporary dance and performance at Tanzquartier Vienna. She worked as translator, artist and as curator amongst others for performance and performative expressions at electronic music and progressive performance festival donaufestival Krems and as a project curator for Vienna based art foundation Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Her research focuses on the fields of unlearning in the context of de-colonial practices, narrative hacking and transculturality. She studied a combination of Romanistics, Art History and Theatre, Film and Media Studies at University Vienna as well as Conceptual Art and Cultural Studies at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

14. Mai 2018  | The Digital Body: Capturing, modeling and animating realistic 3D human avatars
Michael J. Black (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems)
Chair: Robert Trappl (Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence)

We interact with the world through our bodies. As many of our interactions move on-line, we become literally disembodied in the virtual world, breaking the metaphor of the Internet as a replica of our physical space. Can we take our bodies with us on-line? Similarly, AI research today focuses on intelligent systems that lack a human form. Does an AI need a digital body to understand us? To become a digital human, indistinguishable from a real person, avatars need to look like us, move like us, and behave like us. This talk will introduce the current state of the art in capturing, modeling, and animating realistic 3D human bodies. For computers to understand and model us, they need a mathematical description of human form. The talk will introduce the latest technology for 4-dimensional body capture and how machine learning is enabling the creation of virtual humans.

Michael J. Black received his B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia (1985), his M.S. from Stanford (1989), and his Ph.D. from Yale University (1992). After post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto, he worked at Xerox PARC as a member of research staff and an area manager. From 2000 to 2010 he was on the faculty of Brown University in the Department of Computer Science (Assoc. Prof. 2000-2004, Prof. 2004-2010). He is one of the founding directors at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany, where he leads the Perceiving Systems department. He is also a Distinguished Amazon Scholar, an Honorarprofessor at the University of Tuebingen, and Adjunct Professor at Brown University. His work has won several awards including the IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Paper Award (1991), Honorable Mention for the Marr Prize (1999 and 2005), the 2010 Koenderink Prize for Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision, and the 2013 Helmholtz Prize for work that has stood the test of time.
He is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2013 he co-founded Body Labs Inc., which was acquired by Amazon in 2017.

Robert Trappl is head of the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna, which was founded in 1984. He is Professor Emeritus of Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence at the Center for Brain Research, Medical University of Vienna. He was full professor and head of the Department of Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence, University of Vienna, for 30 years. He holds a PhD in psychology (minor: astronomy), a diploma in sociology (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna), is Ingenieur (BEng) for electrical engineering, and quite recently, in 2012, graduated as MBA in General Management. He has published more than 180 articles, he is co-author, editor or co-editor of 35 books, among others "Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence", "Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors", and "Multi-Agent Systems and Applications", these three Springer, Heidelberg/New York, "Emotions in Humans and Artifacts", MIT Press, 2003, "Agent Culture. Human-Agent Interaction in a Multicultural World", Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004, "Programming for Peace: Computer-Aided Methods for International Conflict Resolution and Prevention", Springer, Dordrecht, NL, 2006, "Cybernetics and Systems 2010", ASCS, Vienna, "Wissenschaft und Medizin", 12th ed. 2014, Facultas, Vienna, "Your Virtual Butler: The Making-of", Springer Heidelberg/Berlin, 2013, and "A Construction Manual for Robots' Ethical Systems", Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2015.

27. Mai 2018 | Donna Haraway: Storytelling for the Earthly Survival (2016, Fabrizio Terranova)
Talk: Fahim Amir (Philosopher, Artist, Kunstuniversität Linz)
12:00 h Filmmuseum Augustinerstrasse 1, 1010 Vienna

Donna Haraway is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology, a fem- inist, and a science-fiction enthusiast who works at building a bridge between sci- ence and fiction. She became known in the 1980s through her work on gender, identity, and technology, which broke with the prevailing trends and opened the door to a frank and cheerful trans species feminism. Haraway is a gifted storyteller who paints a rebellious and hopeful universe teeming with creatures and futuristic trans species, in an era of disasters. The filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova visited Donna Haraway at her home in Southern California, living with her – almost liter- ally, for a few weeks, and there produced a quirky film portrait. Terranova allowed Haraway to speak in her own environment, using attractive staging that empha- sised the playful, cerebral sensitivity of the scientist. The result is a rare, candid, intellectual portrait of a highly original thinker.

Credits
Directing, screenplay Fabrizio Terranova
Photography Tristan Galand
Sound Nicolas Lebecque
Film editing Bruno Tracq
Sound editing, Sound Design Frédéric Fichefet
Mixing Cyril Mossé
Music Lawrence le Doux
Visual effects Patrick Theunen, Alain Clément
Postproduction supervisors Alain Clément, Pierre de Bellefroid
Digital titeling animation Clara Sobrino
Process with Isabelle Stengers
Starring Donna Haraway, Rusten Hogness, Cayenne Pepper
Production Atelier Graphoui / Coproduction Spectre Productions, CBA – Centre de l’Audiovisuel à Bruxelles, Rien à Voir, Fabbula, Kunstenfestivaldesarts
With the support of Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and Commission Communautaire française de la Région de Bruxelles Capitale

Fahim Amir lebt als Philosoph und Künstler in Wien; er beschäftigt sich mit den Übergängen von NaturKulturen und Urbanismus, Performance und Utopie, kolonialer Historizität und Modernismus. Amir lehrt an der Kunstuniversität Linz, europäischen und internationalen Universitäten, betrieb die Bar Schnapsloch und den Verlag Proll Positions, und arbeitete in unterschiedlichen Projekten mit Künstler*innen wie Chicks on Speed, Tanja Ostojic, Rocko Schamoni, Alexander Nikolic, Deichkind und Ted Gaier. Als Teil der Performancegruppe Dolce & Afghaner trieb er mit Plakaten und Interventionen österreichische Rechtspopulist*innen und Boulevardmedien auf die Palme. Daneben war Amir Kurator von Symposien zu Neuer Musik (Ferienkurse Darmstadt), Live-Art-Festivals (Kampnagel Hamburg) und Ausstellungen (Secession Wien). Zuletzt erschien von ihm das Nachwort zu Donna HarawaysManifest für Gefährten (Merve 2016). Sein Buch Schwein und Zeit. Tiere, Politik, Revolte (Nautilus, Herbst 2018) wurde bereits vor Erscheinen mit dem internationalen Karl Marx Preis 2018 ausgezeichnet.

Donna Haraway is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology, a feminist, and a science-fiction enthusiast who works at building a bridge between science and fiction. She became known in the 1980s through her work on gender, identity, and technology, which broke with the prevailing trends and opened the door to a frank and cheerful trans species feminism. Haraway is a gifted storyteller who paints a rebellious and hopeful universe teeming with creatures and futuristic trans species, in an era of disasters. The filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova visited Donna Haraway at her home in Southern California, living with her – almost literally, for a few weeks, and there produced a quirky film portrait. Terranova allowed Haraway to speak in her own environment, using attractive staging that emphasized the playful, cerebral sensitivity of the scientist. The result is a rare, candid, intellectual portrait of a highly original thinker.

28. Mai 2018 | Perception as controlled hallucination: on how we construct reality
Lucia Melloni (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics / New York University Langone Health)
Chair: Vera Bühlmann (Technical University Vienna, Institute for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technology)

After the lectures | Beyond Speech – Oral Communications
All lectures are accompanied by culinary interventions by Christoph Fink and Christian Mezera einsundeinsdeluxe