The Will to Engineer
Synthetic Biology and The Third Proliferation of Biopolitics
The promethean sciences of our days are characterized by radical attempts to (re-)design life and nature. Their world-generating techniques drive the concept of engineering into the smallest dimensions of (non-)living matter as well as into the most comprehensive planetary material cycles. The discourses of current technoscience are characterized by practices of transgression and gestures of unlimited feasibility.
Contemporary synthetic biology develops new hybrid ›life forms‹ for industrial applications, works on the ›resurrection‹ of long extinct species for the preservation of collapsing ecosystems and intervenes specifically in the human germline by means of Crispr – biopolitics and applied science become indistinguishable.
Martin Müller will conceptualize the new ›Will to Engineer‹ from a critical-genealogical perspective: analyzing the historical emergence of synthetic biology as the third proliferation of biopolitics.
Guest talk by Martin Müller.
Institute of Cultural History and Theory, Cluster Matters of Activity, Humboldt-University Berlin.
Thursday, 12 March 2020
14.00 – 16.00
Critical Media Lab
Academy of Art and Design FHNW
Freilager-Platz 1 (Dreispitz)
High-rise, 3rd floor
Part of the Open Lab Days
Colloquium Season Spring 2020
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