Upcoming IPS Seminars - Fall 2024

The Institute for Postnatural Studies is pleased to announce the launching of two new seminars that explore the limits between nature and culture, aiming to imagine more desirable futures. Accompanying these two seminars, our space is hosting two ongoing research projects and residencies that delve into new understandings of ecological fragility through theoretical investigation and speculation.

We understand that there is no production of thought without a sensitive awareness of current issues related to geopolitics, the conflict between ethics and aesthetics or ecologies.

CYBERWITCHES AND FEMINIST TECHNOLOGIES

Femenist theory seminar, coordinated by Carmen Leal Hines

With Cyber_nymphs (Justyna Górowska & Ewelina Jarosz), Cy X, Francis Whorrall-Campbell, Françoise Vergès, Dr. Tiara Roxanne and Helen Hester.

7 online sessions

Every Tuesday from 19:00 to 21:00 GMT+1

17th September - 30th October

Registration and more info at [email protected]

250€ registration fee*

*20% discount for IPS alumni - 200€

Cyberwitches and Feminist Technologies is a seminar series designed to place feminist theory in close dialogue with the complexities of cyber-space, technology, and the many philosophical formations that configure digital worlds. Approaching feminism as plurality and spatiality, we will discuss multiple iterations of feminist efforts on a global scale – and work through ways of engaging feminism in developing artistic practices, inside, outside, and between digital environments.

In the historical configuration of “the witch,” we find a space where economic and gendered forms of domination were enacted and solidified. Across the broad field of feminist theory, the category of witch emerges as a method to consider the gender binary as essential to capitalist history, as well as a tool to trouble epistemological binaries of subject and object. In increasingly digitally mediated environments, issues related to the gendered foundations of capitalist relations are fundamental to contextualize the tentacularity of economy. This seminar series will address many branches of feminist approaches to consider the figure of “the witch” as a metaphor of identification with difference, and as a method for approaching feminist perspectives on digital worlds.  

Exploring ideas from afro-futurist, cyber, xeno, glitch and un-categorized feminism(s), with guests from the wide web of intersectional feminist theory and new-media/technology studies, we will collectively consider what feminism means, and how to engage it in practice, online and off. What does it mean to become cyber-witches in digital landscapes shaped in and through capitalist forms of production? How can cyberwitch networks shape open-source commons? In essence, how can feminism(s) help us imagine new forms of the digital? 

** References for this course’s conceptualization include: Justyna Sempruch, Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, Purdue University Press: 2008; and Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, Autonomedia: 2008.

More info

NEW ECOLOGIES: DECENTRALIZING THE HUMAN THROUGH CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES

With Gabriel Alonso and Yuri Tuma

6 online sessions

Every Wednesday from 19:00 to 21:00 GMT+1

18th September - 23rd October

Registration and more info at [email protected]

250€ registration fee*

*Early birds discount of 20% until 27th July- 200€
*20% discount for IPS alumni - 200€

This seminar will examine the glossaries that characterize new ecologies, analyzing inter-species articulations, cultural productions, ecological awareness, and the challenges of artistic, design, research, and curatorial practices in today’s climate crisis. From a broad approach to contemporary ecologies that defy rigid categorizations, we will deepen in the genealogies of the Postnatural, as a thinking tool and political subject. By looking into the terminologies related to the ecological crisis, we will unfold different approaches, both theoretical and material, and investigate other modes and perspectives that decolonize and expand our understanding of the environment. Through virtual visits and collective experiments, this seminar will also explore postnatural landscapes and technologies, such as the botanical garden, and revisit theories from Ecofeminism that invite decentralizing the human through contemporary practices.

The idea of a romanticized nature as a background scenario or neutral framework where human activity takes place is no longer valid and must be replaced by a broader and more complex reflection. In this online course, Nature will be explored as one of the main cultural constructions of modernity, focusing on contemporary perspectives that address environmental and ecological issues, and help foster interspecies relationships between humans, non-humans, matters, and technologies. Through a series of online sessions and lectures, we will explore the entanglements between art, philosophy, and the environment proposing successive decentralizations towards a non-human-centered perspective.

In what ways can new ecological perspectives redefine our relationship with the environment? What philosophical questions arise from the notion that nature and culture are deeply intertwined? How does the concept of postnature challenge the binary classifications of the natural world, and how can we ethically navigate its consequences and implications? What future scenarios can we envision where postnature and new ecological thinking lead to coexistence, empathy, and desirable ways of inhabiting the planet?

In this online course, we will explore nature as a central cultural construct of modernity, focusing on contemporary perspectives that address environmental and ecological issues. Using various theoretical approaches, we will examine the key terms that define new ecologies, analyzing interspecies interactions, cultural productions, ecological awareness, and the challenges faced by artistic, design, research, and curatorial practices in the context of the current climate crisis.

This seminar covers a wide range of issues and themes, including botany, archaeology, media studies, technologies, postnatural territories, ecofeminism, and postcolonial approaches. By using a broad methodology, the seminar engages with many contemporary debates. Through case studies, collective readings, virtual explorations, and critical analyses of various matters and events, the seminar aims to foster interspecies relationships among humans, non-human entities, matter, and technology.

More info