Critique of Creativity

The next session of the Critical Media Lab Colloquium will take place, Wednesday the 19th of November at the Critical Media Lab (D 3.05) from 4:15 to 5:45 PM.

For the fifth session of our first Critical Media Lab colloquium series — What Constitutes Critique? — we host a guest lecture and discussion with Prof. Dr. Anke Finger about “Critique of Creativity – On Imagining the Post-Human in the Digital Age”.

Creativity and the post-human have become buzz­words that pepper a diverse set of discourses, including those in creative industries eager to blaze new trends in the marketplace. Why? Creativity is considered a commodity (in business, in art and art history, in media studies, literary and cultural studies, in philosophy and aesthetics, in education, in everyday life); it remains, too, though, an expression of the human imagination at play – not in order to produce, but to live. Creativity research spans numerous disciplines, making it one of the most fascinating interdisciplinary concepts both for academic inquiry and the public sector in the 21st century. How do we become creative participants in our common humanity? Do we have to? Does the parameter of the post-human (or another instance of the NEW human) compel us to rethink the human element in creativity, making, and design?

Anke Finger is Professor of Media and German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut (USA). She has published widely in the area of interart studies (Das Gesamtkunstwerk der Moderne 2006, The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork, with Danielle Follett 2011) and in media studies, with a focus on the Czech-Brazilian theorist Vilém Flusser (The Freedom of the Migrant, ed. 2003; Vilém Flusser: An Introduction, co-author, 2011). She co-founded and co-edits the online journal Flusser Studies, and she is currently at work on two monographs, Flusserian Creativity: Innovation in the Digital Age, and Everyday Modernism: A Sensorium of the Avant-Gardes).

The session is open to the interested public.