Oceans. Imagining a Tidalectic Worldview
July 4 – September 30, 2018 | Dubrovnik and Lopud
July 4 – September 30, 2018 | Dubrovnik and Lopud
With his contribution, Performativity and Nothingness, Franco “Bifo” Berardi takes us onto an urgent and yet poetic rhetorical realm. Deriving from his publication The Uprising. On Poetry and Finance (2012), his lecture questions the relationship of the physical world of bodies and the abstraction of finance and language within our digital economy. Herein, poetry to him holds a potentiality against growing standardization of behavior, affect and expression. In their recent publication Speculative Drawing: 2011–2014 (2014), Armen Avanessian and Andreas Töpfer tackle the concept of Speculative Poetics, meaning both an aesthetic perception and an outlook on the world: the poetical as a form of visual thinking.
FRANCO ‘BIFO’ BERARDI
Franco 'Bifo' Berardi ( born1948, Italy, where he lives and works ) is a magnate of independent European alternative publications, Berardi’s work focuses on media and information technology in relation to post-industrial and capitalist climates. The author of over 20 published and well-received works, such as After the Future (2011), Franco Berardi began his career in independent writing with initial contributions to New York’s Semiotexte and Milan’s Musica 80, eventually leading him to experiment with free public radio shortly after. Berardi is the co-founder of the electronic magazine Rekombinant which is devoted to media activism, and shares inspiration drawn from Berardi’s autonomous theories.
ARMEN AVANESSIAN
Armen Avanessian ( born 1973, Vienna, lives and works in Berlin ) is currently a research associate at Freie Universität Berlin at the institute of General and Comparative Literature, Armen Avanessian has also had numerous visiting positions through his professional career in academia as a visiting professor currently at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg and previously as a visiting fellow at the German Department of Columbia University in New York. He has worked for several years as a freelance journalist, with positions at major publications in both Paris and London. Having originally studied philosophy, psychology and political science in both Bielefeld, and subsequently completed his Masters at the University of Vienna. He has published several works surrounding the topics of poetry and aesthetic theories, notably in collaboration with the artist Andreas Töpfer (Speculative Drawing: 2011–2014, 2014).
ANDREAS TÖPFER
Andreas Töpfer ( born 1971 in Berlin where he lives and works ) beginning his formative studies with a triad of industrial, book and communication design at both the Burg Giebichenstein University of Arts in Halle and the Royal College of Art in London, Andreas Töpfer is a multi-talented artist with a global track record, having spent time studying abroad in Vancouver, Canada. With an ever-expanding list of clients such as Adbusters, Pasculli and Atelier Milchhof, Töpfer also runs a Berlin-based publishing company with poet and editor Daniela Seel called kookbooks. With his graphic work not only used in commercial contexts, Töpfer’s projects have been exhibited in numerous galleries and art spaces in cities such Leipzig, Linz, Moscow, Tokyo, Munich, Frankfurt and Bregenz.
