GRAMA

Almost daily, we are confronted with reports of internationally groundbreaking developments in prosthetics, robotics, biogenetics, military technology, communication technology, AR/VR, artificial intelligence and medical technology. These reports raise fundamental questions about how to understand and locate human modes of existence in the face of these invasive changes. Where does human existence begin? Where does it end? How are the shifts in conventional distinctions concerning daily life – such as those between man and woman, self and other, human and non-human, nature and technology, past and future – to be dealt with?
To address these questions, the post-graduate program on “Media Anthropology” (GRAMA) has adopted a relationist approach. While it is commonly assumed that relations can only exist between two relata that already exist on their own, in this case it is the other way around: the relationality is thought of as prior to the relata themselves – i.e. the relations and entanglements of humans and media precede their analytical separation. Rather than posing questions about a uniform human nature that is only changed through the additional introduction of technological conditions, the focus thus shifts to the spectrum of existential operations that always already entangle media-and-humans.

The GRAMA consists of twelve doctoral candidates, two post-doctoral researchers and eleven doctoral and post-doctoral research associates, who are working on their research projects. They are being supervised by eight professors from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

The post-graduate program on “Media Anthropology” is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and continues the work of the Media Anthropology Centre of Excellence  ProExzellenz-Projekts Kompetenzzentrum Medienanthropologie (2015-2019)