Symposium: The Only Path to Tomorrow

About

11AM-6PM, FREE TO ATTEND, NO BOOKING REQUIRED

The Only Path to Tomorrow is a symposium convened by Zach Blas. Artists and scholars Ramon Amaro, Erika Balsom, Matthew Fuller, Elena Gorfinkel, Lawrence Lek, Ana Teixeira Pinto and Susanne Sachsse will discuss themes of the exhibition in relation to their own research, ranging from smart drug trends to contemporary manifestations of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism; from futures of artificial intelligence to transparent architecture in Silicon Valley; from modes of minoritarian techo-resistance to aesthetic strategies in queer cinema. Nootropics will be served.

Schedule

11am Introduction
11.15am Susanne Sachsse
11.30am Ana Teixeira Pinto
12.15pm Lawrence Lek
1pm Lunch
2pm Susanne Sachsse & Zach Blas In Conversation
2.45pm Matthew Fuller
3.30pm Ramon Amaro
4.15pm Break
4.45pm Erika Balsom & Elena Gorfinkel In Conversation
5.30pm Susanne Sachsse & Zach Blas Reading

Participants’ Biographies

Ramon Amaro is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests include philosophy, machine learning, pathology and black study. He is also Research Fellow in Digital Culture at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Ramon is completing his PhD in Philosophy at Goldsmiths, while holding a Masters degree in Sociological Research from the University of Essex and a BSe in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Along with being a former Assistant Editor for the SAGE open access journal Big Data & Society, Ramon was a quality design engineer for General Motors and programmes manager for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Erika Balsom is senior lecturer in Film Studies and Liberal Arts at King’s College London, focusing on the history of the moving image in art and experimental documentary practices. Her most recent book, After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation, was published by Columbia University Press this spring. She is author of Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art (2013), the co-editor of Documentary Across Disciplines (2016), and a frequent contributor to the magazines Artforum and Sight and Sound.

Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose practice confronts technologies of capture, security, and control. He is currently a Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and has lectured and exhibited internationally, recently at IMA Brisbane, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and ICA Singapore.

Matthew Fuller is the author of How to be a Geek, essays on the culture of software (Polity). Other titles include Media Ecologies, materialist energies in art and technoculture (MIT), Behind the Blip, essays on the culture of software and Elephant & Castle (both Autonomedia). With Andrew Goffey he is co-author of Evil Media(MIT).  How to Sleep, in art, biology and culture (Bloomsbury) is to be published in 2018. He has worked in and with artists groups such as I/O/D, Mongrel and YoHa. Fuller is editor of books including Software Studies, a lexicon (MIT), and is a co-editor of the journal Computational Culture (http://www.computationalculture.net).  He is Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

Elena Gorfinkel is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King's College London. She is author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (Minnesota 2017), and co-editor of Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image (Minnesota, 2011) and Global Cinema Networks (Rutgers, 2018). Her writing on embodiment, sexuality, labor, temporality and marginal cinemas has appeared in numerous journals and edited collections. 

Lawrence Lek creates speculative worlds and site-specific simulations using software, video, installation and performance. Recent projects include: Play Station (Art Night London, 2017); Geomancer (Jerwood Space, London; HyperPavilion, Venice Biennale, 2017); Sinofuturism 1839-2046 AD (Wysing Arts Centre, 2016); QE3 (Glasgow International, 2016); Shiva's Way (SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul, 2016); Europa, Mon Amour (Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, 2016); Berlin Mirror (Secret Surface, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2016). Lek received the 2017 Jerwood / Film & Video Umbrella Award, and the 2015 Dazed Emerging Artist Award.

Ana Teixeira Pinto is writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a lecturer at Universität der Künste, Berlin, and a research fellow at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. Her writings have appeared in publications such as e-flux journal, art-agenda, Mousse, Frieze/de, Domus, Inaethetics, Manifesta Journal, or Texte zur Kunst. She is the editor of The Reluctant Narrator (Sternberg Press, 2014) and has recently contributed to Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and its Traumas (edited by Matteo Pasquinelli, 2015) and Nervöse Systeme (edited by Anselm Franke, Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski, 2016).

Susanne Sachsse is an actress living in Berlin. She was a member of the Berliner Ensemble where she worked with Heiner Müller, Einar Schleef, and Robert Wilson. In 2001, she co-founded the art collective CHEAP. She has worked in theater, film and art contexts with Keren Cytter, Vaginal Davis, Bruce LaBruce, Katya Sander, and Vegard Vinge/Ida Müller. In 2017 she played the lead roles in Bruce LaBruce’s movies Ulrike's Brain and The Misandrists, and appeared in projects by Yael Bartana (What if Women Ruled the World?) and Phil Collins (Ceremony) at the Manchester International Festival. She presented her first video installation Serious Ladies in 2013 at the Kunst-Werke, Berlin. Later this year, she will direct and perform in Original Sin, A Live Noir Road Movie Concert, a collaboration with Jonathan Berger, Phil Collins, and xiu xiu. She is also a recipient of the Premio Maguey Queer Icon Award from the Guadalajara International Film Festival.