"The Coming Catastrophe": Yuk Hui on the "Transhumanist Catastrophe"

The coming catastrophe poses a challenge to thinking. Only recently have the interrelated events of human-induced climate change and mass extinction begun to unfold as a global media event of proportional magnitude. The proliferation of discourses around impending anthropogenic doom seems to have reached a virtual tipping point, from which there is no return to a “business as usual”-attitude. As the environmental conditions on which all human life depends change in ever more alarming rates, there seem to be few aspects of life, of policy making, and of theoretical work, that can remain unchanged. Scholars in the field of cultural and media theory, particularly in Weimar, are used to observing phenomena of change in terms of their historical becoming. While the identification of the historical causes (and causers) of anthropogenic change is decisive for the assessment of “what there is to be done”, the current situation is unique in that it also challenges habitual modes of thinking and forces us to train our eyes on the things to come.

As a part of this semesters "Bauhaus.Module", the lecture series "The Coming Catastrophe" invites everyone to Yuk Hui's upcoming lecture on the "Transhumanist Catastrophe".

Yuk Hui studied Computer Engineering and Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong and Goldsmiths College in London, with a focus on philosophy of technology. Since 2012 he teaches philosophy at the institute of philosophy and art (IPK) of the Leuphana University Lüneburg where he wrote his habilitation thesis. He is also a visiting professor at the China Academy of Art where he teaches a master class with Bernard Stiegler every spring. Since 2019 he is appointed as Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media of City University in Hong Kong. Previous to that, he was a research associate at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Media (ICAM), postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Research and Innovation of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and a visiting scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin. He is initiator of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, an
international network which facilitates researches and collaborations on philosophy and technology. Hui has published on philosophy of technology and media in periodicals such asResearch in Phenomenology, Metaphilosophy, Parrhesia, Angelaki, Theory Culture and Society, Cahiers Simondon, Deleuze Studies, Intellectica, Krisis, Implications Philosophiques, Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, Techné, Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, Appareil, New Formations,Parallax, etc. He is editor (with Andreas Broeckmann) of 30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory(2015), and author of On the Existence of Digital Objects (prefaced by Bernard Stiegler, University of Minnesota Press, March 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic, December 2016), and Recursivity and Contingency (Rowman & Littlefield International, February 2019). His writings have been translated into a dozen languages.

Topic: "Transhumanist Catastrophe"
Date: 26th November 2019
Time: 19:00-20:30 Uhr
Location: R 015, Bauhausstraße 11