We are joined by Ariana Dongus and Johanna Mehl for a conversation on imaginations of ‘humanness’ in the context of refugee camps fueled by design solutions and Silicon Valley's approach to technology testing.

Johanna Mehl (she/her) is a PhD candidate in cultural studies and design history at TU Dresden, where she holds a Saxon State fellowship and a research associate position at the Chair for Digital Cultures. As a scholar, designer, and educator she is interested in design as a knowledge culture and its entanglements with environmental history, cybernetics, systems theory, and media theory.

Ariana Dongus (she/her) is a Berlin-based critical media scholar, teacher, and researcher. She spent 2018-2022 as a research associate at the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, teaching media theory and coordinating KIM, a critical AI studies group. Her work is dedicated to the social aspects of AI, digital labor exploitation, and invisible infrastructures, aiming to critique today’s digital economies from below. She is currently a Research Fellow at TU Dresden, exploring new forms of labor in relation to machine ‘intelligence’. In 2021, she was awarded the AI Newcomer Award. Her research and writing are regularly featured both internationally and nationally in journalistic reports, essays, and lectures.

The event takes place in our studio in the TU Berlin and is open to all, a livestream will be available here. Join us afterwards for a drink at the bar.