Public Lecture by T. J. Demos

ZHdK Campus Toni-Areal, Room 3.K.13, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8005 Zurich

Drawing on his forthcoming book, Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (Sternberg Press), T.J. Demos will examine creative models of cultural practice modeling alternatives to the human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and technoscientific rationality of the Anthropocene thesis. Rather than uncritically endorsing and recirculating the terminology, conceptualization, and practice of Anthropocene ideology, radical artistic and activist practitioners are exploring multi-species ontologies, experimental and multidisciplinary pedagogies, eco-sexual economies, and forms of institutional liberation, doing so under a variety of names. These, Demos argues, offer vital resources for how to imagine the reinvention of the world in ways just and sustainable and counter the seeming ineluctability of catastrophic climate change.

Prof. Dr. T.J. Demos (Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz) is guest lecturer for the MA Art History in a Global Context in the spring term of 2017, with a seminar titled Against the Anthropocene: Conflicts in Visual Culture and Environment Today.

This talk is co-organized by the MA Art History in a Global Context, University of Zurich and the MA Fine Arts, Zurich University of the Arts. Rory Rowan (Political Geography Unit, UZH) will moderate the Q&A following the lecture, in cooperation with art historian Emily Scott (Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH). Special thanks to Ursula Biemann.