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Activist Neuroaesthetics (online, 8-11 Jul 21)
Online, Jul 8–11, 2021
activistneuroaesthetics.art/conference/
Sarrita Hunn
Activist Neuroaesthetics Conference July 8-11, 2021 via Zoom
Free with registration: https://activistneuroaesthetics.art/conference/
*All times CET/Berlin.
The ACTIVIST NEUROAESTHETICS Conference will take place online July 8-11 and includes a number of important thinkers to Activist Neuroaesthetics including Elena Agudio, Yann Moulier Boutang, Juli Carson, Yves Citton, Arne de Boever, Jacquelene Drinkall, Agnieszka Kurant, Karen Lofgren, Anna Munster, Reza Negarestani, Warren Neidich, Florencia Portocarrero, Tony David Sampson, and Anuradha Vikram. An introductory panel discussion with Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Cécile Malaspina, Warren Neidich, and Charles T. Wolfe will summarize the first ACTIVIST NEU- ROAESTHETICS Symposium (videos now available) held March 5-6, 2021.
We are on the verge of a paradigm shift as we transition from a knowledge and information econo- my to a neural-based one. The advent of an immanent assortment of new technologies like brain-- computer interfaces, cortical implants and attention enhancing drugs will join sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence and constitute what is already being referred to as neoliberal neural capi- talism. Together they will give new meaning to forms of surveillance and digital governance in the coming digital regimes of superintelligence and the singularity. Activist Neuroaesthetics describes an activist approach to understanding not only the importance of neural plasticity in transforming the material brain, but realizing the proactive potential of art and artists in that trans- formational process.
Activist Neuroaesthetics understands the brain does not simply reside in the skull as living matter, but is entangled in the contested socio-political-cultural and technological milieu with which it coe- volves. Instead of minimizing the liminal, unconscious, mystical, and magical conditions of percep- tion and cognition, Activist Neuroaesthetics maximizes it. It refutes the dogma of what is known as Positive Neuroaesthetics which sees the brain as an unchanging, crystallized entity defined by pure and unchanging essences and whose goal is to explain artworks, such as paintings, through its effects upon the brain’s neural processing itself rather than as something happening indepen- dently or outside of the material brain’s jurisdiction. In other words, Positive Neuroaesthetics is focused on facts generated by the scientific method, rather than cultural or artistic ones. Activist Neuroaesthetics is a counter-insurgency which uses its own history of art production, spaces, and temporalities to produce ideologies of dissent where events going on inside and outside the brain
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coevolve together and our cognitive abilities are expanded, rather than normalized. Activist Neu- roaesthetics aims to produce a radicalized post-humanist subject; one which displaces the nor- malized unitary subject and replaces it with a complex global non-binary relational one.
SCHEDULE
THURSDAY, JULY 8 5pm Introduction
5:30pm Panel discussion with Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Cécile Malaspina, Warren Neidich, and Char- les T. Wolfe
7:30pm Warren Neidich
The Brain Without Organs: Ayahuasca and Regression FRIDAY, JULY 9
1pm Yann Moulier Boutang
Digital Transition / Neural Capitalism of the Brain: What art can bring?
2:30pm Yves Citton
Meta-Attentional Battlegrounds: Financial Derivatives and Hyperstitional Activism 5pm Tony David Sampson
Experiencing Radical Aesthetic Ontology 6:30pm Reza Negarestani
Social rationality and neural subsumption: From cynicism, stoicism to Foucault and beyond SATURDAY, JULY 10 - Morning Session
10am Anna Munster
Deepaesthetics: activating machine unlearning in contemporary cultures of predictive AI 11:30am Jacquelene Drinkall
Telepathic Capitalism and Psychic Debt 1pm Kundalini Yoga with Nathalie Anglès SATURDAY, JULY 10 - Afternoon Session 5pm Florencia Portocarrero and Karen Lofgren New Glossary for a Sentient World
6:30pm Anuradha Vikram Planetary Neuroaesthetics SUNDAY, JULY 11
1pm Elena Agudio
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Activist Neuroaesthetics is not one that deploys neuroimaging, but artistic and engaged political imagination
2:30pm Agnieszka Kurant 5pm Juli Carson
Faces of Consciousness: Repetition and Time 6:30pm Arne De Boever
The Glossary Brain
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of artbrain.org, ACTIVIST NEUROAESTHETICS is a year-long festival of events curated by Warren Neidich, Susanne Prinz and Sarrita Hunn including a three-- part exhibition, conference, screenings, lectures and publications, developed by lead institution Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V. with various local partn- ers that will take place online and in Berlin over the course of 2021.
The ACTIVIST NEUROAESTHETICS Conference is presented in collaboration with Saas-Fee Sum- mer Institute of Art.
Please see the website for further information: https://activistneuroaesthetics.art/
Reference:
CONF: Activist Neuroaesthetics (online, 8-11 Jul 21). In: ArtHist.net, Jul 5, 2021 (accessed Feb 27, 2022),
<https://arthist.net/archive/34524>.
