Orient-Institut Beirut
June, 11 to June 13, 2019
The goal of this edition of POM will be to tackle art practices and the relation of art to the machine. In parallel, it will also focus on understanding the influence and relation between art and conflict. POM will tend to explore the connection between the violence of conflict and violence as a process in art production; the role of conflict in the sociopolitical environment and how it relates to the field of art, science, and technology.
POM Beirut will also try for a better understanding of the engagement and responsiveness of people and organizations to conflict, exploring how art may serve as a tool for resolution and for social inclusion; or as a counter-argument, a tool for conflict and/or violence. Conflict can also be understood as a contradicting force within an artwork, artistic methods or in a subject matter, it may also push for ethical questions or reveal conflict of interests.
POM Conference 2019 is hosted by the Institute of Visual Communication of the International University of Beirut and the Orient-Institut Beirut.
Conference series
The POM-conference addresses the politics of the machines and the inescapable technological structures, as well as infrastructures of artistic production in-between human and non-human agency with critical and constructive perspectives. Where and when do experimental and artistic practices work beyond the human: machine and human: non-human dualisms towards biological, hybrid, cybernetic, vibrant, uncanny, overly material, darkly ecological and critical machines? How are we to analyze and contextualize alternative and experimental ontologies and epistemologies of artistic practices beyond transparent dualisms and objectifcation? How are the relationality and operationality of machines being negotiated into cultural and social ontologies? What are the politics – past, current, future – of these negotiations? The POM – Politics of The Machines is a conference series founded by Laura Belof and Morten Søndergaard.
Two Panels will take place at the OIB on Thursday, 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm.
Panel T11: The Ecosystem Analogy:
Machinery of Nature, Borrowed landscapes, Anthropology of the near.
Chairs: Tarek Mourad
Murat Germen: Humankind at war with Mother Nature: In Greenland and away from the Anthropoceneland.
Angelo Vermeulen, Pieter Steyaert, Diego Maranan,Franzes Brazier: Regenerative synthetic ecosystems and evolving asteroid starships: a cybernetic reframing of the politics, poetics and ethics of space colonization.
Panel T 03: Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0):
Art, Cyberphysics, Automated creativity.
Chairs: Bassam Hussein
Kristoffer Raasted: Sonic communication with machines.
Jan Løhmann Stephensen: Towards a philosophy of post-creative practices.