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The University of Southampton
Archaeologies of Media and Technology Research group

Susan Schuppli’s guest talk "From Screen Burns to Oil Spills" Event

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Time:
14:00 - 16:00
Date:
17 November 2017
Venue:
Lecture Theatre A, WSA

For more information regarding this event, please email Professor Jussi Parikka at J.Parikka@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Artist and researcher Susan Schuppli (Goldsmiths, University of London) is giving a guest talk "From Screen Burns to Oil Spills”. The talk is co-organised by AMT as part of the Fine Art Talking Heads-programme. See below for more information about Schuppli’s exciting artistic research into materials as mediatic sensors. All welcome!

About 'From Screen Burns to Oil Spills'

Materials, whether naturally occurring, industrially manufactured, or computationally derived behave in essence as mediatic sensors that archive their complex interactions with the world, producing ontological transformations and informatic dispositions that can be forensically decoded and reassembled back into a history. I call these non-human entities and machinic ecologies material witnesses. Through the presentation of a series of cases and screening of clips this public lecture tries to account for the myriad ways in which the responsiveness of matter to external forces demands an acute and renewed sense of material and technical specificity in order to grasp the full political implications that such ongoing changes or interactions might yield. The dare posed by materials, to invoke philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers, is that they emphasise what is needed from us to think matter differently. Apprehending materials as dynamic and expressive entities rather than inert and silent witnesses is achieved not only by means of the specific forensic probes that can be brought to bear upon them in order to extract information and translate their material encodings into actionable modes of public address, it also results from being compelled to think about the limits of our own knowledge. How do our subjective modes of perception and choice of interpretative frameworks play a decisive role in determining what kinds of matters actually matter?

Speaker information

Susan Schuppli, Goldsmiths University of London, is an artist and researcher based in the UK, whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters. Current work explores the ways in which toxic ecologies from nuclear accidents and oil spills to the dark snow of the arctic are producing an “extreme image” archive of material wrongs. Creative projects have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, Canada, and the US. Recent projects include Trace Evidence, a video trilogy commissioned by Arts Catalyst UK & Bildmuseet, Sweden and Atmospheric Feedback Loops, a Vertical Cinema commission for Sonic Acts, Amsterdam. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the forthcoming book, Material Witness (MIT Press). Schuppli is Reader and Acting Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London and was previously Senior Research Fellow on the Forensic Architecture project. In 2016 she received the ICP Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research.

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