This week, I'll be in Hamburg speaking at what promises to be an extraordinary event. I'll give a solo talk on Transhumanism and have a discussion with Aubrey de Grey on Immortality and Life Extension. The event is set in a film set, here's the link and brief:
CONGRESS + MISE EN SCENE Artistic Director: Hannah Hurtzig, Mobile Akademie Berlin
“When does a life begin? When does a life end? And who decides?”
How do we answer these questions today?
“The congress is the location of an encounter between various persons and languages which currently define what is still/already alive and what is still/already dead. The zone in-between, a unclear zone of the undead, is the subject of controversial discussion in the life sciences and is being continually extended at a furious pace. The research undertakings of biotechnology, the considerations of medical ethics, the achievements of transplantation medicine and the hesitating help of philosophy will be confronted and charged with the visual worlds of pop culture over the three days. At these interfaces the congress shall gather narratives, signs, images and ciphers for an archive of the undead.”
The concept:
Through lectures and talks, presentations and dialogues, natural scientists and humanities scholars, artists and nurses with their varying approaches and methods – in theory and practice – encounter one another in the spaces of a film set. Visitors can move freely through these film sets, which evoke places typically associated with the production of an “undead”. Equipped with a portable radio receiver, the audience decides which programme it wishes to follow live and which one only through the headphone