Experimentelles Ahnen

Text

The German verb ahnen is difficult to translate. It means something like to anticipate, to guess, to suspect, or to forebode. While pointing to a rather dark future – «Ahnung ist dunkle Vorerwartung» (Kant) – it is phonetically reminiscent of the noun Ahnen (ancestors). So there is a sense of not-yet-knowing that stretches all the way back to bodies that have existed before. While a premonition, Ahnung, overcomes a person, more active forms of Ahnen allow for a self-induced poetic state or collective frenzy: «doch sind wir entzückt uns hinein zu ahnen in jene zustände zu ahnen, in welchen die dichtenden gelebt haben» or, «dichtung, eine geahnte füllung der lücken» (von Arnim). In this workshop, for the first time, outerwoman invites three scientists/practitioners from the fields of biology, neonatology, and science and technology studies to participate in an exchange and testing of practices: How can fieldwork and scientific knowledge be combined with forms of fabulation or „fictioning“ (David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan)? What ethical challenges arise? How can we use language-based and performative practices to go to places that we cannot go in scientific research? How can we inhabit other bodies, roles, positionalities? How can we make our practices accessible to non-artists? How can we enable interdisciplinary thinking or even forms of co-creation between art and science? Drawing on previous interviews related to the future of pregnancy and extracorporeal states, the workshop will focus on three aspects: 1. biological evolution & latency – the bodies of those who lie behind us/before us; 2. neonatology – anticipating the characteristics of those to come; 3. machine-human relations & empathy: understanding the relationships between m/other machine, new bonds. The two-day workshop will include a panel session; a collaborative session generating a synthesis of the panel using a score; a cycle of three practical exercises.

Vortragende