Feminist Economies Collective creates contexts to break the crisis of imagination in capitalist realism. Together with others we imagine futures in which shared values are no longer primarily appropriated for profit and accumulation of wealth, but open up new perspectives on economic realities. Through this process, we build fragments of new worlds based on…

    Belief and imagination underlie our use of technology. In the edited volume, Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural (2019), contributors demonstrate how technologies cannot be analysed outside “the system of beliefs and performative rituals that inform and prepare their use” (Natale and Pasulka 3). One core belief identified in the book…

  In her book Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient Dreams of Technology (2018), science historian Adrienne Mayor narrates how ancient Greek mythology already imagined robot-like automata and other forms of artificial life. She writes that such myths can be considered as ‘cultural dreams, ancient thought experiments, “what-if” scenarios set in an alternate world of possibilities,…

  **This seminar takes place at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, from 14:30 to 17:00. Access to the exhibition ‘Rewinding Internationalism. Scenes for the 1990s Today’ is included in the seminar.   The notion of the imaginary has circulated within the humanities since Cornelius Castioiardis’ ‘Imaginary Institution of Society’ first published in 1975. It has appeared in…

  Singer. Dancer. Movie star. Activist. Queer icon. Afrofuturist. Working class heroine. Time traveler. Prophet. Feminist. Android. Dirty Computer. Janelle Monáe is all these things and more, making her one of the most fascinating artists to emerge in the twenty-first century. Dan Hassler-Forest’s new book Janelle Monáe’s Queer Afrofuturism explores how her work has connected different…

    ** This event has been swtiched online due to COVID-related issues. Please join us on Microsoft Teams! AI systems are increasingly part of everyday products, and designers take part in shaping how they are being integrated in our daily life. As a technology, AI is facing more unknowns about consequences and ethical use…

    **This session takes place at De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam In the Acting Like a Robot research project we investigate how theatre may contribute to new approaches to the design of robot behavior and the interaction between humans and robots. The big challenge for such design lies in what Lucie Suchman describes as the “deep…

  A medium never simply “is”. It carries with it not only a history but also a future. Its future is imagined as a perfection of its – sometimes imaginary – potentials, just as there are imaginations of future media, which may also be or remain imaginary media. Moreover, there is always an imaginary of…

    My natural response to the challenge set by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink and Anne Karin ten Bosch in the final session of this year’s TiM seminar series to explore methods of drawing, the ‘soft atlas’ and performative mapping (Utrecht University 2022) was to venture outside with a drawing pad and pencil in my hand….

    I have been enjoying the privilege of writing this blog entry from a place in Utrecht Museum Speelklok after having visited their extensive exhibition of musical automations. I came to the place in search of something being “lost in translation”, to quote the title of Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film, when musical performances were…