On conceptions of time and accelerated Capitalism: Guo Jinniu used to be a migrant worker in South China, where he worked at the Foxconn factory for some time. His poems reflect the massive transformation China undergoes since opening up to economic liberalism. To article...
Can we say that Technology as is exists today competes in its global impact with Nature and Society? Media theorist Erich Hörl and geoscientist Peter K. Haff discuss the Technosphere: how did technology turn into a semi-autonomous ecosystem? To article...
The connections between war and music are as diverse as they are many. One hundred years after the First World War, the festival program of Singing the War looks at the manifestations of these relationships since then, from technologies developed for use in war that would later take on a central role in music (radio, the loudspeaker, recording, etc.) to music as war propaganda, as a form of resistance, as a means of processing, etc. Singing the War draws an arc over the century to draw attention to just how close war is to Europe today. A Discussion with Bernd Scherer and the curators of the festival Detlef Diederichsen and Holger Schulze. To article...
Emergency administration of the moment versus history as a space of possibility: How can our society develop new models for action instead of just continually reacting to unexpected challenges? In order to answer this question Bernd Scherer has thrown a wide net—from contemporary history to military and technological history. Capitalism, technology and acceleration have given rise to an explosive amalgam whose composition urgently requires analysis: the present. To article...
The German version of this interview first appeared in September 2015 in a supplement issued with the newspaper taz for 100 Years of Now. On October 3, F.S.K. performed Ein Haufen Scheiss und ein zertrümmertes Klavier as part of the opening of 100 Years of Now. A multimedia documentation of the event can be found in the HKW Mediathek. The accompanying volume Krieg Singen is part of the book series 100 Years of Now Library. To article in German...
Documentary filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri takes a close look at modern Egyptian society in the shadow of the three “Pharaohs” Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak. A discussion about her planned trilogy. To article...
What is time? And what does acceleration on the one hand and big data on the other do to people? As early as 1989, the sociologist Helga Nowotny addressed the decisive question of how changes in society affect our sense of time: Her book Eigenzeit hit a nerve, advancing to become a classic with translations into French, English and Italian. Now she has taken up the theme again: What is our sense of (our own) time today? To article...
The so called “refugee crisis” is not a crisis of the refugee, it’s a “crisis of society.” Starting from that simple insight Andrew Herscher connects the “housing question” (Friedrich Engels) of the 19th century to the “refugee crisis” of the 21st. The “humanity-mongers” of the 19th century addressed the working class’s housing problem rather than the underlying social problem itself. Today’s humanitarian endeavors of “digital shelter,” on the other hand, provide refugees with debit cards to seek a dwelling rather than supplying housing in the form of architectural efforts. To article...
It is in the experiment that we are closest to time’s traces, and time can always, only be grasped up to a point. In Time’s Attack on the Rest of Life, a diverse palate of artists and scholars such as molecular biologist and science historian Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, composer Sandeep Bhagwati, and installation artists Evelina Domnitch and Dimitry Gelfland reflected on the constant shifting and multiplicities of the shaping of time in the context of the opening of 100 Years of Now. To article in German...
Without an eye for the breaks, continuities, and ellipses of the past, the crises and conflicts of the present cannot be read. The project series 100 Jahre Gegenwart traces the powers of WWI in the digital present with an understanding of time that allows a perception of history as a space of possibilities. In a series of performances and lectures by the likes of artist collective Slavs and Tatars, ensemble zeitkratzer, or historian Jörn Leonhard time is demonstrated as a key to understanding. To article in German...
