Have you tried turning it off and on again?: Jörg Heiser

Together the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art present a keynote lecture by Jörg Heiser, resulting from the Honours Programme of the Arts and Culture Studies of the department. Prior to the Keynote, students of the Honours Programme will present their findings of research carried out in collaboration with different cultural partners in Rotterdam.

Program:

3:45 pm: Doors open
4 – 4:45 pm: Presentations by Honours Programme students
Break
5 – 5:45 pm: Keynote Jörg Heiser
5:45 - 6 pm: Discussion

Keynote Lecture Jörg Heiser: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

The title of this keynote is a running gag from British comedy series „The IT crowd“: that’s the first thing the bored tech guy asks the person calling about a computer problem. Seriously, could that be good advice, more generally, for cultural practice today? Should we consider rebooting, restarting what we do as designers, artists, or intellectuals, in terms of how it corresponds – or does not correspond anymore – to what’s happening in society at large? For example, didn’t we once think that creating alternate realities was the privilege of artists, not anticipating the rise of „alternative facts" and ruthless populism? Or what to make of the post-structuralist critique of scientific truth, if that very critique is hijacked to deny climate change? And what do we make of „public opinion“ if Social Media are increasingly governed by cooperate algorithms and invested with social bots and paid trolls? The lecture will connect some basic questions about how art affects, and is affected by, changes in society, with a more specific reflection on the Arts and Culture Studies Honours Programme of the department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

A reservation is mandatory via the ticketlink on this webpage. Students of the Honours Programme are automatically signed up and do not have to reserve a ticket.

This event is part of Studium Witte de With, the higher education platform for art and theory by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Studium Witte de With is intended to serve as a catalyst bridging various fields of knowledge across higher education. It presents lectures, debates, workshops, and other programming in collaboration with partner institutes, rooting the programme in the curriculums of Academies and Universities.