Illuminations

SUMMER SCHOOL

23-29 July 2018

Tyumen

To participate

WHY
ILLUMINATIONS?

It is important for us to see and acknowledge co-possibilities and blurriness within every concept, reminiscent of the twinkling lighting of a fluorescent lamp, where the shadow is closest to the source of light. We are looking for co-existences rather than conflict and exclusivity.

However, instead of following the common wisdom which accepts multiple points of views, we aim at their cross-breeding and hybridization. If only because most of the lines of thought we are developing stem from the same crises – of disciplines and of thinking more generally. Inorganic life, materiality, illusory being, otherness and “other” kinds of causality.

Strange, weird and eerie things that surround us: oil, electricity, nuclear mushroom clouds or home equipment - all of them are capable of building a new ontology of forces around them. We will aim to introduce these things into new modes of existence.

By calling our projects Illuminations, we are inspired by the appearance of light. Every point of light creates a liminal, blurred space, like in chiaroscuro art, in which a co-existence may become possible, even if simly a coexistence of the bright and the dark. This complex relationship is increasingly becoming a crucial/key element in contemporary ontologies.

SPEAKERS

Andrew Culp

Faculty member aesthetics and politics, California Institut of arts. PhD 2013 University Ohio. Books: Dark Deleuze.

Dylan Trigg

Associate professor of the department philosophy of the Vienna University, PhD at the University of Sussex. Books: The Memory of Place: a Phenomenology of the Uncanny (2012); The Thing: a Phenomenology of Horror (2014); Topophobia: a Phenomenology of Anxiety (2016).

Adam Berg

Philosopher, Professor California Institute of the Arts, author of Phenomenalism, Phenomenology and the Question of Time: A Comparative Studies of the Theories of Mach, Husserl and Boltzmann (2015).

Reza Negarestani

The philosopher, author of the Cyclonopedia (2008) and Intelligence and Spirit (2018), teacher in New Center for research & Practice by direction Critical philosophy. Currently working on the problems of the general artificial intelligence and possible epistemological models as «The construction of the worlds».

Ray Brassier

Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut, author of Nihil Unbound and the forthcoming book on the philosophy of Willfrid Sellars

Jason Adams

Author of Occupy Time: Technoculture, Immediacy, & Resistance After Occupy Wall Street, and co-editor of Deleuze & Race, with Arun Saldanha. Co-Founder and Co-Director of The New Centre for Research & Practice, and has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College.

Jaya Klara Brekke

Sphere of interest: politics of protocols and questions of control and power in distributed systems and architectures. She is writing a PhD titled Distributing Chains, Three Strategies for Thinking Blockchain Politically.

Patricia Reed

Artist, writer, and designer based in Berlin. Her work concerns the entanglements between epistemology, diagrammatics and modeling with politics adapted to planetary scales of cohabitation. She is also part of the Laboria Cuboniks working group.

Mohammad Salemy

Independent NYC/Vancouver-based critic and curator from Iran. He has curated exhibitions at the Koerner Gallery and AMS Gallery at the University of British Columbia, as well as the Satellite Gallery and Dadabase.

Andrey Rodin

Philosopher, senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Author of the Axiomatic Method and Category Theory (2014). Interests: philosophy of mathematics and science.

Oxana Timofeeva

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Sciences and Sociology in EUSPb. Books: History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence and Freedom (2012). Interests: Philosophy of Nature, Critical Animal Studies, Philosophical Anthropology, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Posthumanism, Contemporary Art.

Franco “Bifo” Berardi

Writer and theorist based in Bologna. His latest books include Futurability, Phenomenology of the End, and The Soul at Work. In the 1970s he was one of the founders of the pirate radio station Radio Alice, the magazine A/traverso and of the political movement Autonomia. He has worked across media such as books, magazines, radio, TV and cinema.

Victor Vakhstayn

Professor, dean faculty of social msses, author of books «Sociology of everyday life and the theory of frames » and «The case of everyday life»

Denis Sivkov

PhD., Associate Professor theoretical sociology and the epistemology of social sciences
in RANEPA, specialist in the field of research science and technology (STS).

Yoel Regev

PhD (Hebrew University in Jerusalem). Graduated post-doctorate at the Institute philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven. Currently - Associate Professor of European university. Books: Coincidentology. A brief treatise on the method (2015), The Impossible and coincidence. On the revolution situation in philosophy (2016).

Ivan Boldyrev

philosopher and historian of ideas, teaches at the University of Nijmegen, a doctoral student at the Humboldt University of Berlin, author of the book "The Time of Utopia" and other works devoted to critical theory, German idealism and the philosophy of economic science

Polina Khanova

Tutor in the Moscow State University. Author and translator in the Logos journal.

Ekaterina Nikitina

PhD Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach (UŚ) in the area posthumanism and animal
studies on the topic of the category «Human» and «non-human» in the modernist literature and bio-art.

Anton Syutkin

Philosopher, senior laboratory assistant of the European University, researcher of modern materialist dialectics and the heritage of Soviet Marxism

Show all

PARTICIPATE

The school’s doors are open for all; your academic position, citation index, relevance of a research topic are of no major importance. We take on board no more than 10 participants for each track. We introduce this limit due to comfortable group sessions. An overall number of participants is 30 persons.

How does the admission process work?

We do not follow formal criteria but review the essays. A participant should send an essay which can be written in English or in Russian. Any photo- video- audio-materials are permitted; literacy and writing style are not decisive for the final review but welcome. The essay should contain no more than 1300 words.

A theme of the essay should reflect each course’s agenda. The additional criteria for each track are specified in corresponding courses info. Review will be executed by curators of a relevant track and involved speakers.

Fluent English is required for participation. We do not ask for any certificates but take notice that major part of events during the school will be delivered in English.

An application deadline:

1 July 2018

LIVING
CONDITIONS

Before submitting
please ensure your essay is attached
to the application form

transfer
from
Tyumen
to school’s
location

meal

two-, three-
and four-bed
rooms

To participate

Independent “tracks”
of the School

Dark Ontologies: Riddles in the Dark

This track is dedicated to several branches of contemporary philosophy — pessimism, dark ecology, and dark vitalism, the legacy of Gaston Bachelard, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin. The common feature of thematic diversity is its orientation towards opacity and destabilization of steady ontologies.

This track proposes consistent consideration of the question of reason. Following Deleuze’s text "What is grounding?", participants will investigate and open up new aspects of this conundrum.

Essay requirements

The main criterion is the quality of your research and novelty in the usage of concepts. We are equally delighted to receive essays which compare different concepts, positions, logics, or perspectives, as well as to receive texts posing a unique problem.
Academic criteria and solemnity of style are inessential for us. We appreciate the problem’s decree as much as its solution.

To participate

Neorationalism and the New Mathematical Models

The course is dedicated to the modern paradigm of thought called neorationalism and exemplified by the writings of Ray Brassier, Reza Negarestani and Peter Wolfendale. It explores the developments in the contemporary analytic and pragmatist philosophical traditions as tools and possibilities to redefine ontological and epistemological questions that dominated the XXth century. The course will also focus on such topics as foundations of mathematics, topology, and axiomatic systems. These topics will provide substantial background for discussions on practical issues, be it Artificial General Intelligence or formal epistemology.

Essay requirements

Due to the course’s thematic overlook, a particular interest in neorationalism and contemporary mathematics is encouraged. Topics ranging from data analysis, theoretical aspects of artificial intelligence to history and philosophy of mathematics are all welcome.
Knowledge of analytical and pragmatist schools of philosophy is not required as well as the formal knowledge of mathematics, yet any expertise in these areas will increase your chances of writing a successful essay for this course.
The central topic of the essay should coincide with the course’s. The grade of the essays will depend on original and novel ideas expressed by the author as well as logical and rhetorical strictness.

To participate

LABOUR, POLITICS, AND TIME IN CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM

This track is dedicated to political economy’s concerns as — broadly speaking — theoretical investigation of interrelationships between economy and politics, labour and political action. From ancient times politics and economy, public action and labour have been considered as separated spheres of human activity; after World War II this partitioning has firmly settled within the intellectual division of labour’s structure with the advent of the "economy" as formal and technocratic study. We resort to political economy along our track and it’s not just an attempt to reanimate previously pushed back scientific approach. Our concern is to reopen the "economy" as an object of philosophical reflection and political action and political economy as an all-embracing social theory

Essay requirements

The essays should be devoted to the reconstruction of a historical argument (e.g. an argument against Marx’ value theory, genealogy of a concept (e.g. to analyze the usage of the concept "virtue" by Marx and Virno), comparative analysis of different theoretical approaches to Marx’ conceptual model (e.g. how it is done by political marxism or autonomism), or to an analysis of any example (it can come from popular culture, current agenda, or from a research project) while using concepts of (post-)marxist theory. The essay should be related to the track’s agenda. Applicants are free to use any source for their essays. There may occur a theoretical exchange between Benjamin Buchloh and Immanuel Wallerstein since their dialogue is productive and formulates new problems.

Essay requirements:
- structure/organization of an argument;
- relevance of posed problems;
- quality and originality;
- consistent argumentation;
- clarity of narration;
- spectrum of cited works.

To participate

SCHOOL
PROGRAM

Dark Ontologies

Neorationalism

Labour, Politics and Time

DAY 1

THE OBSERVER PROBLEM Timothy Morton
ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE — THE WAY TO THE OUTSIDE
Andrew Culp, Gilles Deleuze Felix Guattari, Walter Benjamin

DAY 2

THE TASK OF TRANSLATOR. INORGANIC LIFE, BILDUNG, CAESURA
Walter Benjamin

DAY 3

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AND HIS CRITICISM OF ROMANTICISM
Dylan Trigg, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Timothy Morton

DAY 4

ANXIETY OF THE BASEMENT, TRAUMA OF THE WINDOW
Dylan Trigg, Gaston Bachelard

DAY 5

A WEREWOLF, A VAMPIRE AND A GHOST — A DISPUTE ABOUT THE HERITAGE
Andrew Culp, Gilles Deleuze Felix Guattari, Eugene Taker. Jacques Derrida, Nick Land

DAY 6

COEXISTENCE. WEIRD MATERIALS
Benedict Spinoza, Timothy Morton

An array of events: dark ecology
and new materialism

A parallel program of the school for every track’s participants: anyone can attend these events.

Open talks and round tables will be devoted to following themes:
- Materiality and Ontology of Oil and Energy;
- Anthropocene and Humanity as an ecological factor;
- Ecological catastrophe and extinction of humanity.

We also provide educational courses which are devoted to problems of teaching of contemporary philosophy and social theory.

Speakers from The New Center for Research Practice (Jason Adams, Mohammad Salemy, Jaya Klara Brekke and Patricia Reed) will deliver a lecture on Machinic Democracy: Speculative Governance on a Planetary Scale.

PARTNERS

How does the admission process work?

An application deadline:

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