News
Seminar
October 29, 2023 ―
November 19, 2023
Topological and Metabolic Approaches to Ontogenesis
A four-session seminar hosted by The New Centre for Research & Practice in the Art & Curatorial Practice, History, Design & Worldmaking program,
If asked what the world is made of, we can say it’s made of objects and categories, or we can say it’s made of stuff. This seminar takes the latter proposition, of stuff, substrate, field. But instead of asking what stuff the world is made of, we ask how stuff changes, how things, relations and sense resonate, emerge, transmute, and condition but do not determine one another. Repurposing Galileo’s legendary observation – Eppur si muove – we will read and discuss theories of dynamic, historicity, process, and temporality.
Session 1 (29 October 2023)
Workshop the most salient working notions from topological matter and dynamics so that they provide conceptual grips for subsequent sessions: transformation, process, continuity and field.
Session 2 (5 November 2023)
Synthesize activating aspects of metabolism — beyond physics and beyond computation — from vegetal biology (Mauseth) and from emerging accounts of organism (Longo, Montevil, Kauffman).
Session 3 (12 November 2023)
Alloy theories of ontogenesis and individuation (Alexander, Simondon, Sarti & Citti).
Session 4 (19 November 2023)
Apply these notions to the problem of “making sense in common” (Brender, Deleuze, Morris, Stengers).