Diann Bauer | University of Westminster (original) (raw)

Papers by Diann Bauer

in Gary Zhexi Zhang (ed.), Catastrophe Time (London: Strange Attractor | Cambridge, MA: MIT) , 2023

The demand of the Anthropocene today is speculative — in the sense of tarrying with the unknown, ... more The demand of the Anthropocene today is speculative — in the sense of tarrying with the unknown, and more specifically with futures of instability discovered by science over time scales incompatible with human lifetimes, generations and maybe even narrative structures. For instance, the practical problems presented by burning ancient fossil fuel affecting the climate into the far future points to the need to look at the most extreme version of non-experiential temporalities. Yet this speculative reckoning nonetheless takes place in present experiences and narratives. To go further with this, lessons from fundamental physics may be important.

The Moving Image Review Art Journal (MIRAJ), 2021

Can images made in the context of art and design inform and alter reality itself? Can they consti... more Can images made in the context of art and design inform and alter reality itself? Can they constitute a world and thereby construct futures in a way the Sellarsian image does?

These questions have led me to the ideas of the propositional image and propositional practices. In my view, all the contributors to this discussion are, among others, in some way or another involved in this kind of work.

COMP(H)OST – IMMAGINARI INTERSPECIE (Nero Editions) www.neroeditions.com/product/comphost/, 2021

We are at a moment where species allegiance—perhaps a necessary means for survival—can only be es... more We are at a moment where species allegiance—perhaps a necessary means for survival—can only be established through commitments beyond our species using the capacities specific to our species. Humans appear to have a unique aptitude for abstraction, which in turn makes us uniquely placed to deal with problems at a planetary scale, even if they are problems of our own making.

If we are committed to our own survival on this planet, we must use this aptitude to recognize that we are a node in an interdependent system that includes humans, other species, as well as ecosystems and complexities that cannot be dealt with as a series of isolated issues. Which is precisely where alienation as a tool can be productive.

But does merely recognizing our own embeddedness in assemblages of loose, mutual reliance do anything to cultivate the conditions for collective response-ability? Is it sufficient in the face of the damage we have wrought? We would argue that practices of care must go beyond acknowledging the coincidence of coexistence if they hope to be politically meaningful.

Mark Foster Gage (ed.), Aesthetics Equals Politics: New Discourses across Art, Architecture, and Philosophy, 2019

The capacity to judge something as aesthetic is a product of what Xeno-Feminism (XF) calls aliena... more The capacity to judge something as aesthetic is a product of what Xeno-Feminism (XF) calls alienation, which is not simply the judgement by me of something not like me — that is, alien; rather, an aesthetic experience is the process of having a way to map meaning on to the experience of “not me.” The subject is already alienated from itself as an a priori condition of understanding the object as alien at all. Alienation as XF refers to it deals more with the conditions by which aesthetic experience is possible rather than the specifics of an aesthetic, how something can be aesthetic and not just the stimulus itself.

Adapted from presentation at conference ‘Aesthetic Activism’, Yale, 2016

Gean Moreno (ed.), In the Mind But Not From There: Real Abstraction and Contemporary Art (Verso 2019), 2019

The essay proposes that under real subsumption and the proliferation of cybernetic governamentali... more The essay proposes that under real subsumption and the proliferation of cybernetic governamentality and automation, a new kind of “representational but non-indexical” image has come into existence—what the authors call the General Abstract Image. This is a synthetic image generated out of data and produced by different apparatuses, at times but not necessarily with human input. As such, these images are inevitably concretized versions of otherwise abstract relations. Employing conceptual tools provided by analytical philosopher Wilfred Sellars, the authors draw an analogy between what Sellars calls the “scientific image”—the image that science provides in disregard of human self-conception and understanding—and GAI as the image of the abstract relations that comprise the social totality in disregard of immediate subjective comprehension of the world. In light of the emergence of this synthetic image, the authors further propose, real abstraction may be rethought less as that which c...

Harvard Design Magazine #46, “No Sweat” , 2018

Reinventing Horizons, eds. Václav Janoščík, Vít Bohal, Dustin Breitling (Prague: Display Association for Research and Collective Practice), 2016

The determination of time in the outer reaches of physics may seem remote, bearing little relatio... more The determination of time in the outer reaches of physics may seem remote, bearing little relation to lived experience. But the question of time's existence as an objective reality and/or a product of consciousness lays a foundation for our convictions regarding our ability to effect the future or not.

The Time-Complex. Post-Contemporary, 2016

The initial formulation of your political programme was made in the form of a manifesto, a genre ... more The initial formulation of your political programme was made in the form of a manifesto, a genre that proposes a transformative relation between the present as it has been historically constructed and, on the other hand, a future spelt out in that manifesto and (in your case) endorsed by it. The manifesto in part identifies a discrepancy between the desired future and the present; it presents a concrete image of another-better-state of things that looks to drag where we are now towards it. This speculative, futural transformation of the present is one element of what we are here calling the 'postcontemporary'. Our interest in your proposal with regard to the post-contemporary is primarily twofold: (i) to be more precise on how the future is to shape present actions: and (ii) to understand better the praxis you propose between the future and the present as a viable politics. In particular: Why was a manifesto form required to articulate your demands? What kind of political action does this futurally-constituted claim make-both in relation to currently prevalent formations of feminism and also the implied criticism of how the latter's political horizons are now predominantly corganized? LC-HH: We could have articulated XF in various ways. What the manifesto form offered was a prompt to formulate XF with concision; to distil the key foci of our shared endeavour in as condensed and powerful a way as possible. As a form, the manifesto also encourages a libidinized and affective engagement with theoretical and political projects-it is a form that wants you to say 'I want.' LC-PR: Yes, and beyond the affective affordances endemic to the manifesto form, it is particularly useful in instigating viral uptake via online readership-paragraphs are short, can be easily tweeted/shared-so this formal quality was equally in mind when finding a way to coalesce our often divergent, six voices.

A group exhibition, curated by Juan Bolivar, which brought together a range of mostly London-base... more A group exhibition, curated by Juan Bolivar, which brought together a range of mostly London-based artists, to portray a contemporary consciousness affected by a sense of technological paranoia

Over a period of eighteen months, a selected group of international artists and writers focused t... more Over a period of eighteen months, a selected group of international artists and writers focused their attention on Tegel airport, they observed how it is used, they engaged in new activities and imagined how the building might function in the future. This book and DVD is the outcome of what might be described as an open-ended enquiry and, as such, embodies new perspectives and approaches to the problem of urban renewal, regeneration, social organisation, mobility and the legacy of modernist architecture. This approach to site is central to imagining how art practice can slow down, re-orientate and redefine the successive cycle of masterplans and regeneration schemes so that we can begin to consider what is at stake in the spaces that we occupy. The publication includes a DVD with a selection of 27 short films.

The appearance of collage in early twentieth-century art marked an immense alteration in visual e... more The appearance of collage in early twentieth-century art marked an immense alteration in visual experience. In collage, space and time could be sliced and spliced in ways previously unavailable to photography or painting; collage could be additive (placement, juxta-position,com-...

Drafts by Diann Bauer

Commissioned for 'House of Commons', cancelled Momentum 11 Biennale, 2021

Environmental emergency is a problem common to us all. However unevenly distributed it may be in ... more Environmental emergency is a problem common to us all. However unevenly distributed it may be in terms of both effects and liabilities, it is nevertheless a global catastrophe. As Benjamin Bratton notes, 'the looming ecological consequences of what is called the Anthropocene suggest that in the decades to come, we will need to terraform Earth if it is to remain a viable host for its own life.' it seems that (some) humans will be confronted by increasingly pressing questions about the necessity of planetary engineering as we progress through the 21st century and beyond.

But perhaps we also need to think not just about changing our environment, about changing who and what we are, how we function, and how we relate to that environment as well as to the human and non-human life with which we share the planet.

It is our contention that we should conceptualize possible responses to ecological collapse not simply in terms of terraforming, but also from another perspective: rather than just adapting environments to countermand the destructive changes we have instigated, we must also adapt ourselves to better fit our environments. We might term this adaptation, in conversation with Bratton’s work, ‘anthropoforming’.

Books by Diann Bauer

The current state of accelerationist philosophy increasingly appears to serve as a point of coale... more The current state of accelerationist philosophy increasingly appears to serve as a point of coalescence for various attempts at redefining diverse potentialities, estranged objectivities and inhumanisms which circulate the contemporary discourse. The following questions need to be addressed: what can we do within the confines of present conditions, while facing these challenges, agencies and vast spaces beyond? How can we unbind the shackles of the present? What are the possibilities and conditions of accelerationism itself, and what are the investments and aspirations for such a language and for such an endeavor?
That is what we mean by Reinventing Horizons.

This book arises from a peculiar set of motifs and circumstances. It aims at accompanying the conference which is held on the 18th and 19th of March 2016 of the same name and an exhibi- tion Artificial Cinema, held at Tranzitdisplay, Prague. It also serves a purpose of its own. As such, the book takes its point of depar- ture in the accelerationist discourse, which we take to be a broad and heterogeneous strand of thought attempting a redefinition, or even a repurposing, of current means, be it within the context of academia, the arts, technology or media, in order to address unresolved contemporary socio-political problems. It has been our objective to bring together a broad variety of contributors in order to accommodate various themes coalescing around the debates of contemporary thought.