Marco Donnarumma, artist, scholar and Research Fellow at Berlin University of the Arts, hosts a one-day symposium investigating the hidden threads across posthuman affect, cognitive robotics, ritual performance and art. Three stakeholders engage in a series of lectures and an ensuing collective conversation so as to offer a transdisciplinary insight into how today's forms of (intelligent?) computation can affect - and be affected by - bodies, machines and the arts. Coupling theory with practice, the event features the exhibition of a prototype for Donnarumma's forthcoming new artwork, an autonomous prosthetic sculpture named Amygdala, as well as a screening documenting the creative process of the artist and his collaborators.

The event is part of Configurations (2016-18), an artistic research project exploring the abject and intimate borders between human and machine through performance, ritual and sound. The project is funded by Graduiertenschule at Berlin U. of the Arts, Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences and Einstein Stiftung Foundation. It is made possible by a partnership with the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory (DE),  a collaboration with Ana Rajcevic Studio (DE/UK), and support from Hack the Body, Baltan Laboratories (NL).

Open to the public, no prior registration is needed.

Invited speakers:

Marie-Luise Angerer
Chair for Media Theory / Media Studies, Institute of Arts and Media, Potsdam University, Berlin, and author of the forthcoming Ecology of Affect (Meson Press)

Irini Papadimitriou

Digital Programmes Manager, Victoria & Albert Museum, and Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans, London

Manfred Hild
Professor of Digital Systems at the Beuth University of Applied Science, and Head of the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory, Berlin

The series of events is co-funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin and is a cooperation between the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Graduate School at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS) of UdK Berlin.

When?
Monday, 24 April 2017, 7pm

Where?
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin

[event is held in English]