4.11. Lecture with Stephanie Rothenberg: Collaborating with Non-humans on Economics, Science and Impending Disaster
When human systems continue to fail us, is it possible to reimagine the world through non-human actors? In this lecture, Stephanie Rothenberg will discuss her research and correlating artworks that explore the inequitable human and non-human relationships that emerge within the notion of technological progress at the intersection of science and economics. These projects reflect on the historical underpinnings between science and political economy – from the early scholarly connections between Darwin and Malthus to the current landscape of biotechnology and ecosystem services.
Date:
Monday, November 4, 2019, 7 p.m.
Location:
Faculty of Art and Design
Van de Velde Building, room HP05
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 7
99423 Weimar
In her artworks, Stephanie merges both low-tech analog electronics and emergent digital media with organic matter and biology to create incongruous and dissonant outcomes. These take the form of expanded cartographies, visualizations and futuristic speculative designs that engage video, sculpture and installation. Through these convergences she is interested in questioning what it means to be resilient in the anthropogenic space of the streamlined networks and infrastructures of global development and finance that are continually confronted by the untamable and the wild.
The lecture will include recent projects along with research and works-in-progress conducted during her 2019 sabbatical year that span travel and residencies in Puerto Rico, the Gulf of Maine, Fukushima Japan, and the Panamanian Rainforest.
About Stephanie Rothenberg:
Stephanie Rothenberg’s interdisciplinary art draws from digital culture, science and economics to explore relationships between human designed systems and biological ecosystems. Moving between real and virtual spaces her work investigates the power dynamics of techno utopias, global economics and outsourced labor. She has exhibited throughout the US and internationally in venues including Eyebeam (US), Sundance Film Festival (US), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art / MASS MoCA (US), House of Electronic Arts / HeK (CH), LABoral (ES), Transmediale (DE), and ZKM Center for Art & Media (DE). She is a recipient of numerous awards, most recently from the Harpo Foundation and Creative Capital. Residencies include ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin, TOKAS / Tokyo Art and Space, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace, Eyebeam Art and Technology and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been widely reviewed including Artforum, Artnet, The Brooklyn Rail and Hyperallergic. She is an ongoing participant and organizer in the MoneyLab research project at the Institute of Network Cultures and co-organizer of the 2018 MoneyLab 5 symposium that took place in Buffalo, NY. She is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Art at SUNY Buffalo where she co-directs the Platform Social Design Lab, an interdisciplinary design studio collaborating with local social justice organizations.
» www.stephanierothenberg.com