Main focus: Utopia / Dystopia
Twitter handle: @krustelkram
Websites/Blogs/Social Media Accounts:
http://www.krustelkram.com/utopian-dreaming/
Languages: German, English
City: Frankfurt
Country: Germany
Topics: change, popular culture, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, science fiction, dystopia, fredric jameson, imagination, postmodernism, mark fisher, transhumanism, utopia, technological racism, donna haraway, postmodernity, sylvia wynter, zombies
My main topic is getting humanity's imagination out of its contemporary jail of either a blissed out faith in technology or a defeated, hopeless belief in future dystopias. My main go to minds for help with this daunting task are Sylvia Wynter and Fredric Jameson. No matter what the problem at hand, economics, racism, the climate catastrophe, I am convinced that what keeps us in our paralysed state is a failure of imagination, changing perspective and telling different stories.
In my recent presentations I talked about the implications of this lack of imagination investigating a wide range of topics like economics, copyright and patent policies, artistic activism, artificial intelligence, the singularity and transhumanism. I work on reclaiming utopian thinking as the critical tool it was invented for, against the anti-utopianism, that misdefined Utopia as a blue print and the cynical technological "utopianism" of the recent decades.
Provided I get a couple weeks for investigation, I am open and would be delighted to use my critical utopian lens, to think and write about topics I haven't yet spoken about.
Examples of previous talks / appearances:
I was invited to present and take part in a panel about IP exploitation and the creative industries.
It wasn't recorded but you can read what I had to say.
A transcript of my presentation for Utopia, Now! The sixth symposium of the Imaginaries of the Future Leverhulme International Research Network, Chelsea College of Arts, London, 29th- 31st August 2017
You can find a audio recording of my presentation here:
http://www.krustelkram.com/utopian-dreaming/2017/9/12/utopia-now-audio-recordings
For a transcript and further information and background reading material, please visit: WHY THE ZOMBIE HAUNTS THE CYBORG - UNVEILING THE INHERENT RACISM OF TRANSHUMANISM @RE:PUBLICA 2018 #RP18
This talk is in: English
For more information, links to further reading and a transcript, please visit:
The Utopian Impulse & Its Trouble with Postmodernity (Fredric Jameson) re:publica #RP17