Saturday, 7.7.2018
10:30
In English
Moderation: Maximilian Haas

The talk will explore techniques as mode of relating between participants with heterogeneous disciplinary backgrounds and address questions such as: What are the theoretical and historical necessities and constraints to re-think our modes of knowledge production today? What are the potentials, the gains and losses of considering these modes, and knowledge in general, as techniques? What is the particular relevance of addressing modes of relating? And could techniques be considered as figurations in Donna Haraway’s sense?

The talk will intersect theoretical and historical reflections with experiences of the transversal working group FORMATIONS that Melanie Sehgal co-leads with the artist Alex Martinis Roe. Since 2015 FORMATIONS has been experimenting with practical responses to the insufficiencies of modern categories of thought and their disciplinary and institutional sedimentations in view of creating techniques of transdisciplinary encounter.

Melanie Sehgal is Juniorprofessor of Literary, Science and Media Studies at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), currently, however serving as Professor of Philosophy of Culture(s) at the same university. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Technical University Darmstadt and is the author of Eine situierte Metaphysik. Empirismus und Spekulation bei William James und Alfred North Whitehead (Konstanz Univ. Press, 2016). Together with the artist Alex Martinis Roe, she is leading the multidisciplinary working group FORMATIONS, which is experimentally exploring ways of knowing beyond disciplinary habits of thought.