January 25–26, 2020
Gurminder K Bhambra, Aria Dean, Rainer Forst, Markus Gabriel, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Natasha Lennard, Matteo Pasquinelli, Nina Power, Tiziana Terranova, Lea Ypi
Societies are not givens, but take shape in a process of negotiation, regulation, governance and resistance. The symposium Performing Society is devoted to the question of how we can conceive of societies in their current dynamics as well as their future formations. Do we need new terminology or are we called upon to rethink that already at our disposal?
The imagination and construction of the social, the relationship between immigration and class, the performativity of power, and faith in progress, will be among the topics discussed, but also the political as a concept, as an act of speech or as epistemological and social justice.
Within the framework of the exhibition Museum, in which art offers scope for the Other and its visualization, for freedom, transgression and resistance, the symposium is intended as an invitation to contemplate the societies in which we live–and want to live.
Saturday, January 25
11am–1pm
Kristina Hasenpflug: Welcome
Susanne Pfeffer: Introduction
Aria Dean: Bad Infinity
Lea Ypi: Immigration and Social Class
2:30–4:30pm
Geoffroy de Lagasnerie: Is Democracy a Relevant Concept for Thinking about Politics?
Rainer Forst: The Performativity of Power
5–6pm
Gurminder K Bhambra: Performing Society, Reforming Society: From Progress to Reparations
Sunday, January 26
11am–1pm
Natasha Lennard: Liberatory Language Games and Anti-Fascist Speech Acts: Why We Need a Better Understanding of Truth and Meaning-Making in the Fight for Social Justice
Nina Power: We Live in a Society: Ironic Belonging and Meme-Being in a Post-Public Age
2:30–4:30pm
Tiziana Terranova: Hypersocial Planetarization
Matteo Pasquinelli: Tools, Numbers, Machines and Algorithms: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence
5–6pm
Markus Gabriel: Fiction, Imagination, and Social Facts–The Dialectical Glue of Society
The symposium will be held in English.
Admission is free—please rsvp to symposium [at] mmk.art.
The exhibition Museum is on view until February 16 at MUSEUM MMK and ZOLLAMT MMK.
Supported by:
