Media Ecologies, Research Machines, and Productions of Subjectivity

A Colloquium organised by Professorship for Media Theory and History of Science and the Freigeist project “Madness, Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe”

When? The sessions will be held on select Tuesdays from 11:30 to 13:00, as listed in the program below.

Where? Seminarraum 003, Berkaer Straße 1, 99423 Weimar, Bauhaus University Weimar

How to attend? No registration required. Preparatory materials will be available for download one week before each presentation here: https://nextcloud.uni-weimar.de/s/efC5XbTwtBr29Ep (Password: 2iCeiKxsMN).

Contacts: Elena Vogman (elena.vogman@uni-weimar.de) and Marlon Miguel (marlon.miguel@uni-weimar.de)

 

April 8, 2025:

Carlos A. Segovia (with a response by Martin Kempe):

“On difference as iridescence and humanity as an interface. Notes on subjectivity, machines and media(l) ecologies, after Félix Guattari”

“There is no irreversible movement that will carry the subject in one direction or another, there is no destine or ultimate necessity, there is no death of the subject; what interests me is to resingularize subjectivity,” affirms Guattari in his last written interview. The notion of subjectivity is in Guattari not only multiple, differential, and open-ended: it is at once allo- and auto-poietic, exo- and endo-consistent, and though it is not limited to the human, which is on the other hand a polyvocal category, there is something like a specifically human subjectivity in Guattari. Thus understood, it denotes our relationship to the world, space, time, life, death, love, solidarity... and it comprises the “Universes” of value, reference and meaning and existential “Territories” we give shape to. Briefly, Guattari’s take on human subjectivity can be deemed constructivist, unlike Deleuze’s sacrificial approach to it which, at most, privileges random connectivity over against “articulation,” a key category in Guattari’s earliest writings of which there is no trace left in L’anti-OEdipe, but of which Guattari’s thought between the late 1980s and the early 1990s may be described as a more systematic development. Yet in this sense Guattari, his post-anthropocentrism notwithstanding, departs from today’s post-humanist consensus, be it newmaterialist or speculative-realist; though certainly not on behalf of classical humanism. Alter-humanism (like alter-structuralism in a different context) might be perhaps the best term to describe Guattari’s philosophy, rather than post-humanism (and/or post-structuralism). Or, at the very least, it can be seen as a daring index of what Guattari’s philosophy invites us to think beyond the thought, of what the thinkable still offers to us in it as an “unassimilable surplus,” to draw on a Levinasian expression that Guattari seemed to like. [...]

Carlos A. Segovia is an independent British-born and Berlin-based Spanish philosopher working on the problem of contingency and thinkability in a post-nihilistic key. His publications include Dionysus and Apollo after Nihilism: Rethinking the Earth–World Divide (with Sofya Shaikut; Brill, 2023), Guattari Beyond Deleuze: Ontology and Modal Philosophy in Guattari’s Major Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), Félix Guattari and the Ancients: Theatrical Dialogues in Early Philosophy (with Gary Genosko; forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2025), and Nietzsche’s Pre-Dionysian Apollo and the Limits of Contemporary Thought (forthcoming with Peter Lang in 2025). For more information on his current and work, see [here](https://slu.academia.edu/CarlosSegovia/CurriculumVitae).

Martin Kempe studied Philosophy and Art History at Humboldt-University and Free University in Berlin. He is currently working on a dissertation in philosophy at Free University Berlin examining Felix Guattari's micropolitics of desire and their articulation at the intersection of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and philosophy. His research investigates the relationship between clinical practice and political theory, with particular emphasis on the work of Frantz Fanon and Guattari.

 

April 22, 2025:

Ana C. Minozzo:

“Vibration as aesthetic paradigm: excess between the critical and clinical” 

In the history of psy (Psychiatry, Psychologies and Psychoanalysis), excessive states have been bound to control and containment, physical and chemical, for the last centuries. The psychoanalytic event, whilst bringing to the fore unconscious processes as well as the subject of drives, operates under the problematic logic of castration in its aesthetic-political grounds of both clinic and theories. In this presentation, I will depart from the work developed in my book Anxiety as Vibration: A Psychosocial Cartography (Palgrave, 2024) and reach the question of infrastructures of care, asking: What does a vibrational aesthetic paradigm do to the clinical encounter? Vibration, as a feminist concept anchored in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, will be proposed as a mode of relationality and construction attuned to current catastrophic times and as a possible tool for situatedness. Together, we will consider matters of time, space and the encounter as we look at examples of collective efforts to vibrate the critical and the clinical, mobilising excessive experiences into novel arrangements of liveable-lives.

Ana C. Minozzo is Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychosocial Studies at the University of Essex where she is part of the FREEPSY collective research on the legacies of free psychoanalytic clinics.

 

May 6, 2025:

Adrienn Kácsor:

“Migrant Constructivism”

Migrant Constructivism revisits the early period of Soviet Constructivism from a “migrant point of view,” that is, through the lens of Hungarian migrant artists and theorists who encountered the experimental, non-figurative works of the Constructivists in Soviet Russia in the early 1920s. I look at the curious afterlife that the so-called “laboratory” aesthetics of Constructivism had on the streets of Berlin in the 1920s via three Hungarians: Alfréd Kemény, Jolán Szilágyi, and Alex Keil (also known as Sándor Ék), who had visited Moscow in 1921. Once in Berlin, Szilágyi and Keil used Constructivism to produce simple, cheap, and ephemeral objects for communist street protests—the most unpretentious and fugitive, yet experimental works that Kemény, one of the most avid promoters of Constructivism in Europe, would theorize as the “revolutionary mass art of the proletariat.” I put the Hungarians’ kinetic propaganda puppets in dialogue with the kinetic spatial constructions of their Soviet comrades to recover one of the paths that Soviet Constructivism made into life, in this case, into the didactic agit-prop art of German street protests.

Adrienn Kácsor is Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bauhaus-Universität (2024–2026), where she is working on a research and exhibition project on migrant art histories, titled The Fugitive Avant-garde.

 

May 20, 2025:

tbc

 

May 27, 2025:

Alexandra Selivanova:

“Surrealism and Soviet Architecture of the 1930s: Thing-Like Buildings, Multilayered Shells, and Holes”

The reflection of Surrealism in pre-war architecture has been repeatedly addressed by researchers as a complex and “elusive” topic, as it never took on concrete material forms—there were no practicing architects among the movement’s participants. However, as Kurt von Meier wrote (Surrealism and Architecture, ARTFORUM, September 1966, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 60–65), “this does not mean that Surrealism was entirely devoid of architectural imagery or activity, as architectural problems occupy an interesting, though often overlooked, place in the movement's history.” In the context of Soviet culture in the 1930s, which emphasized its fundamental divergence from the Surrealists (who, conversely, sought contact with the USSR), discussing any direct intersections becomes even more challenging, as any openly stated connection with Western movements could serve as grounds for serious accusations. Nevertheless, an analysis of artworks—including painting, graphics, theater projects, and architecture of the 1930s—allows us to situate Soviet art within the thematic concerns of the Surrealist circle. The general atmosphere of the pre-war world, intensified by criticism of the “rational” avant-garde and demands for a “sensory,” hyper-emotional environment, as well as fascination with contemporary Italian art, gave rise to a unique oneiric architecture—partially realized in material form, partially remaining in projects or cinema. I will focus on the main techniques employed by architects during this period and draw connections with the ideas of European Surrealism.

Alexandra Selivanova is a curator and art historian specialising in the history and theory of the early Soviet culture, Postdoctoral researcher at “Animismus/Maschinismus” at Bauhaus University Weimar.

 

June 10, 2025, 11:00–16:00:

Workshop mit Julia Bee, Jasmin Degeling, Maja Figge, Marlon Miguel, Morten Paul, Henning Schmidgen, Simon Strick, Elena Vogman

“Everybody wants to be a fascist”: Medien, Milieus und Affektpolitiken in faschismuskritischer Perspektive

“Es wäre also notwendig, ein für alle Mal mit der allzu simplen Formel aufzuräumen: ‘der Faschismus wird uns nicht passieren’. Der Faschismus ist bereits passiert – und er hört nicht auf zu passieren. Er schlüpft durch die feinsten Maschen hindurch; insofern er an einer mikro-politischen Ökonomie des Wunsches partizipiert, die selbst nicht von der Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte zu trennen ist, ist er in dauernder Evolution begriffen. Der Faschismus scheint von außen zu kommen, doch seine Energie findet er im Herzen des Wunsches eines jeden.” (Félix Guattari, “Mikropolitik des Wunsches”)

“Die Perfektionierung der Produktionsmittel führt zwangsläufig zur Verschleierung der Techniken, durch die der Mensch ausgebeutet wird – und damit auch der Formen des Rassismus.” (Frantz Fanon, “Rassismus und Kultur”)

Dieses Treffen zielt weniger darauf ab, eine gültige Definition des zeitgenössischen Faschismus zu etablieren. Vielmehr nehmen wir uns vor, seine Mechanismen und Medien aus zwei Perspektiven zu diskutieren. Die erste Perspektive knüpft an den Begriff einer „Mikropolitik des Wunsches [désir]“ des Schizoanalytikers Félix Guattari an. In einem gleichnamigen Text, der ursprünglich 1973 als Vortrag auf einer Konferenz zu „Psychoanalyse und Politik“ in Italien gehalten wurde, entwickelt Guattari einen „analytisch-politischen“ Ansatz, der sich weigert, zwischen individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen zu trennen. Seine Hypothese über eine enge Verbindung zwischen Faschismus und Begehren [désir], die für Guattari im Zentrum der Subjektivitätsproduktion verortet ist, geht einher mit der Annahme neuer, mutierender Formen des Faschismus, die das Begehren stets an die spätkapitalistische Profitökonomie anpassen. Die zweite Perspektive nimmt die Zusammenhänge zwischen der heutigen faschistischen Wende in spätkapitalistischen politischen und sozialen Formationen – insbesondere ihre Ausprägungen in Deutschland – und (digitaler) Medialität in den Blick. Wie lässt sich die Faschisierung alltäglicher Medienpraktiken erfassen? Welche Affektökonomien bringen diese Praktiken hervor – und auf welche Weise? Wie könnte eine affektive Politik des Widerstands – oder ein nicht-faschistischer Wunsch – gegen die Modalitäten und Ethologien des digitalen Faschismus und dessen Profitstrategien aussehen? Warum sind es vor allem die gender- und queer-medienwissenschaftlichen Ansätze, die die Medien der Faschisierung des Lebens heute adäquat zu beschreiben vermögen?

 

June 24, 2025:

Keti Chukhrov:

“Vygotsky’s Enigma of Internal Speech. Thought without Language”

Unlike post-structuralist theory which posits culture, consciousness and reason as the modes of authority, rationality and control, and juxtaposes them to insanity, creativity, and unreason, Lev Vygotsky – due to his discovery of the internal speech – subscribes to a converse standpoint. He claims, that it is in internal speech that the most profound speculation resides in; internal speech is independent both from language and intellect, it triggers thought even regardless of language. Consequently, “Higher mental functions” and speculative logic (along with thought) stemming from internal speech, also develop relatively independent from language, and are based much more on volition, than intellect. Moreover, it is the volition, that urges personality to internalize social phenomena and tune them as Geist events, thus generating culture and consciousness in all their social scope. In case volitional incentive becomes more important in constructing thought than intellect and rationality, then insanity and even certain sorts of mental deficiencies cannot be regarded as the realms beyond thought and reason. 

Keti Chukhrov is a guest professor at the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe. Until November 2022 she worked as a professor at the School of Philosophy & Сultural Studies at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). In 2012–2017 she was the head of Theory and Research department at the National Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow. In 2017–2019 she has been a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow in UK, Wolverhampton University. Her latest book _Practicing the Good. Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism_ (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) deals with the impact of socialist political economy on the epistemes of historical socialism. Her full-length books include: To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (European Un-ty, 2011), and Pound &£ (Logos, 1999), and a volume of dramatic writing: Merely Humans (2010). Her research interests and publications deal with 1. Сomparative epistemologies and political economies of capitalist and non-capitalist societies 2. Philosophy of performativity 3. Art as the Institute of global Contemporaneity.