Spinning-On: STS Movement Workshop on 27–29 September 2023
In an era fraught with dizzying socio-political events and burgeoning ecological catastrophes, this workshop for a special issue will delve into the concept of epistemic dizziness as a disordered state of whirling vertigo, applying it to the contemporary state of STS. As we navigate the tumultuous landscape of an open-ended pandemic, war, and socio-ecological devastation (Stengers 2021), the research practices of STS itself risk inducing ›epistemic dizziness‹. This workshop, inspired by Donna Haraway (2016), draws on ›serious fun‹ as a means of staving off paralysis and fainting, urging that knowledge production can serve as both a coping mechanism and a source of resilience. Repurposing the concept of ›ilinx‹, as delineated by Roger Caillois (1961), the series of lecture performances will critically examine playful dizzying practices in Western, indigenous, and other worlds as a pathway towards comprehending our vertiginously speedy world.
EASST Fund (https://www.easst.net )supports this workshop, which will serve as a frame for a closed editorial workshop to prepare a special issue on the theme and also aims to reach an interested public in Berlin and beyond to engage with the state of contemporary STS and scholarship in general in creative manners.
We are looking forward and kindly invite you to this three-day workshop by members of the Lab Jonna Josties, Britta Acksel, and Maxime Le Calvé, which will take place at the “Matters of Activity” Cluster’s Central Laboratory, Sophienstraße 22a, September 27th-29th, 2023.
Invited speakers:
César Giraldo Herrera, anthropology, Leibniz-Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung (ZMT)
Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond, Fine Arts, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
Joe Dumit, anthropology, University of California, Davis
More info here: “Matters of Activity” news channels!
is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She is currently working on an anthropological analysis of start-up ecosystems.
is an anthropologist of art and science, currently postdoctoral research associate at the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activities” (HU Berlin).
is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at Goethe-University Frankfurt and a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen. Her research is about policy instruments to further ecological sustainability transformations in cities.