Radical Enlightenment. A Symposium on Cybernetics and the Soul
→ Palais de TokyoRadical Enlightenment. A Symposium on Cybernetics and the Soul
Stimulation through discourse, visuals, sound, and nourishment
Friday March 15, 2013, 1–11pm
Aurélien Bellanger, D. Graham Burnett, Vincent de Roguin, Lauren
Huret, Alain Kaufmann, Jelena Martinovic, Francis McKee, The Otolith
Group, Marco Pasi, Pascal Rousseau, Laurent Schmid, Stig Sjølund,
Suzanne Treister, Joël Vacheron
Organised by Lars Bang Larsen and Yann Chateigné Tytelman.
Palais de Tokyo, room 37
13, Avenue du Palais-Wilson
75016 Paris
www.palaisdetokyo.com
Western Enlightenment was truncated by capital, traditionalism and
instrumental reason.
The radical Enlightenment we never got includes aesthetic and
scientific experiments, counter-cultural movements, as well as entire
modernities that have been disqualified as esoteric.
Historically, a radical Enlightenment placed sharper oppositions
between philosophy and theology, governance and freedom. On crucial
points regarding human rights, colonial issues, democracy and the role
of the church, the radical tendency opposes a moderate Enlightenment.
As Jonathan Israel points out, “Enlightenment ‘progress’ was thus very
wide-ranging and multi-faceted.” (A Revolution of the Mind. Radical
Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy, 2010.)
In this context the post-war science of cybernetics presents a
critical ambiguity. On the one hand cybernetics—the science of
“communication and control in the animal and the machine” according to
Norbert Wiener—set the bio-political state to work through analogies
of brain and computer, cell and transistor, electric circuit and
nervous system, and in this way lies at the heart of today’s
scientific determinism and administrative utopias. On the other hand,
the fact that cybernetics rendered the contour of human life fuzzy in
relation to machines, plants and other creatures became a productive
point of departure for the artistic creation of new bodies, machines,
pleasures, and modes of becoming.
The symposium intends to invoke the spirit of a radical Enlightenment
by gauging exchanges between art, science and counter-culture. Topics
addressed in the seminar include mystical experience and medical
experimentation; wayward cybernetics, military theory and network
theories; electronic music, television and technologies of
conditioning; robotics, trans-humanism and futurology; as well as
hermetic philosophies and sorcery.
A playful event with a rhythmic structure, the symposium will test the
limits of discourse in an attempt to stimulate the nervous system and
produce something like an enlightened metabolism in which the soul can
be reinstated as a frontier in the regime of positivist physiology.
Food and drinks will be served.
—
Program
All in English except when mentioned (F).
13.00
Introduction
Lars Bang Larsen
13.30
Altered States
Jelena Martinovic, Cybernetics, Mystical Consciousness and Experimental Science
D. Graham Burnett, Sensory Deprivation, Extraterrestrials, and Zoosemiotics
15.00
Esotericism and Counterculture
Francis McKee, The skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures
Marco Pasi, Whose lights are you on? Esoteric paradoxes of the Enlightenment
Tarot card readings by Stig Sjølund (1)
16.30
Interlude
Lauren Huret, Next station terminus cosmos, freedom freedom
17.00
Cybernetic cults, global communities
Joël Vacheron, The Whole Earth Catalogue, USCO and the ethos of the
Comprehensive Designer
Aurélien Bellanger, La préhistoire des machines (F)
Tarot card readings by Stig Sjølund (2)
18.00
Screening
The Otolith Group, Anathema
19.00
Future Being
Alain Kaufmann, Economie des promesses technologiques: convergence
NBIC et transhumanisme (F)
Pascal Rousseau, Psychedelia. Une archéologie de la perception magnétique (F)
Tarot card readings by Stig Sjølund (3)
20.30
Defense Systems
Laurent Schmid, Brutal Ardour
Suzanne Treister, HEXEN 2.0
22.00
Music, media theory and conditioning
Vincent de Roguin, Panoramage > son, dispositions et articles de foi (F)
22.30
Conclusion
Yann Chateigné Tytelman
—
Biographies
Aurélien Bellanger is a writer based in Paris. His first novel, La
Théorie de l’information, has been published in 2012 by Gallimard
Publications
D. Graham Burnett is professor of history at Princeton University and
an editor at Cabinet magazine in Brooklyn
Vincent de Roguin is a composer, artist and writer based in Geneva. He
currently studies at Geneva University of Art and Design, Work.Master
program
Lauren Huret is an artist based in Geneva. She is the director of
Superstition magazine and currently studies at Geneva University of
Art and Design, Work.Master program
Alain Kaufmann is a sociologist of science and biologist, and Director
of Interface Sciences-Sociétés, University of Lausanne
Jelena Martinovic is an artist based in Switzerland. She has just
completed her Phd in the History of Medicine at the University of
Lausanne
Francis McKee is a writer and curator working in Glasgow. Since 2006
he has been the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. He is a
lecturer and research fellow at Glasgow School of Art
The Otolith Group is an artist collective founded by Anjalika Sagar
and Kodwo Eshun in 2002
Marco Pasi is Associate Professor in the History of Hermetic
philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Pascal Rousseau is an historian of art based in Paris. He is professor
of history of art Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University
Laurent Schmid is an artist and publisher. He lives in Bern and
Geneva, where he supervises the Work.Master program at Geneva
University of Art and Design
Stig Sjølund is an artist based in Stockholm
Suzanne Treister is an artist. She is again based in London having
lived in Australia, New York and Berlin
Joël Vacheron is a freelance journalist and writer based in London. He
is currently lecturer in Visual Communication and Researcher Ra&D at
ECAL (University of Art and Design Lausanne)
—
Organizers
Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian, independent curator, and writer
based in Copenhagen. He teaches art theory at Geneva University of Art
and Design, Work.Master program
Yann Chateigné Tytelman is an art historian, independent curator and
writer based in Geneva. Since 2009, he serves as Dean of the Visual
Arts Department at Geneva University of Art and Design
—
The symposium is a project by Geneva University of Art and Design
(Head – Genève), hosted by Palais de Tokyo, Paris. It is part of the
research project Art, Science, Counter-Culture: Perspectives on a
Radical Enlightenment. It takes place on the occasion of Joachim
Koester’s exhibition Reptile Brain or Reptile Body, It’s Your Animal.
As part of Koester’s exhibition, Lars Bang Larsen and Yann Chateigné
Tytelman have curated the micro-group show Seismology, an ambivalent
homage to the Stalinist behaviourist I.P. Pavlov.
Seismology
Works by Søren Andreasen & Jakob Jakobsen, Ann Lislegaard, and Henrik Olesen
Documents: Aleksei Gastev, Ivan Petrovic Pavlov, Vsevolod Pudovkin and
Jerzy Grotowski
Soundtrack: Vincent de Roguin
Display: Xabier Salaberría
Graphic design: Shaffter Sahli
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, February 27 through May 20.