1970 saw the start of production for an unusual vehicle under President Salvador Allende in Chile. The Yagán stood for Chilean socialism’s approach to technologies and the materialization of Allende’s utopian project. Eden Medina tells the tale of an inexpensive utility vehicle and how it entered Chile’s history. To article...
The Iranian island of Kish has a special status. A globalized free trade zone was established here, inspired by political and economic hubris. The artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Barak Afrassiabi tell the story of the island’s history and an unusual shipwreck. To article...
The binary juxtaposition of race and technology is an extremely problematic component of the Western narrative of civilization. With the aid of historical examples and science fiction, the literary scholar Louis Chude-Sokei exposes its absurdities. To article...
Culture and media theorist Benjamin Steininger from the group Beauty of Oil explains the fusion of the coal and petrochemistry industries since the 1920s and sketches the far ranging consequences from the Second World War to the present. To article...
Environmental concepts have their own time. The media historian Orit Halpern describes the engineering-driven transformations of architecture and design since the middle of the 20th century and how they led to ideas of a technological habitat. To article...
The year 1948 was a visionary moment in which antigenetics, ideology and the exploration of life in other worlds mutually inspired one another. The historian of biology Luis Campos casts light on the “avant-gardes” of breeding biology, on their ideas for the creation of new organisms and habitats. Is it just a question of time before visions of the future from back then become the reality? To article...
In the second edition of the Dictionary of Now Eyal Weizman, architect turned intellectual activist, meets social historian Dipesh Chakrabarty to talk about the Forum. Vague concepts of morality are useless in dealing with climate change. An efficient FORUM, as Chakrabarty maintains, needs to take up a planetary perspective. To article...
Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue was an eight-day teaching and learning experiment in which new forms of knowledge production and dissemination were tested. Art and cultural critic Brian Holmes who participated as an instructor reflects on the exemplary model course and its outcomes. 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...
