1st Beyond Humanism Forum

Post-Trans-Metahumanist Exchanges in Times of COVID-19 & the 10th Anniversary of the Metahumanist Manifesto

Featuring: Stelarc, James Hughes, Leo Igwe, Sang Wook Yi, Francesca Ferrando, Carmel Veisman, Yvonne Förster, Keoma Ferreira, Jaime del Val, Anna Markopoulou, Evi Sampanikou, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Jan Stasienko.

The 1st Beyond Humanism Forum is a metaglobal event with leading scholars, artists, and intellectuals from 5 continents (Australia, Africa, Asia, South and North America and Europe) and 11 countries (Nigeria, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, USA, Israel, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland), who will talk about the impact of the pandemic crisis from a diversity of Post-Trans-Metahumanist perspectives, the Metahumanist Manifesto’s 10th anniversary, and further issues of contemporary relevance. 

Critical exchanges across posthumanist, metahumanist and transhumanist approaches could provide a fruitful and urgent arena of debate around the challenges emerging, which concern fundamental rights and freedoms, privacy, the role of the body and a deep transformation of humanity and the planet amongst many others.

You can access the live stream via the Youtube channel “Posthumans go viral”, and participate in discussions using the chat function available:

·         YOUTUBE LINK 2nd July: https://youtu.be/dFzMV_jXaaA

·         YOUTUBE LINK 3rd July:  https://youtu.be/urJcMzAZAew

Further information can be found on the Beyond Humanism Network site:

·        http://beyondhumanism.org/beyond-humanism-forum

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This  metacontinental online event is  a branch of the Beyond Humanism Conference, which this year was going to happen in Lesbos, Greece for the third time, and has been postponed to the COVID-9 pandemic. 

On a regular basis, we will have live digital events which will be streamed via Youtube, Facebook, and twitter. You can follow us at the following channels. Please join us there, and please also join the discussion rooms in posthumans2021.slack.com.  If you are interested in participating, please contact Prof. Evi Sampanikou e.sampanikou@gmail.com

Organizers: Jaime del Val, Evi Sampanikou, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Organizing committee: Anna Markopoulou, Sangkyu Shin, Chryssi Soteriades

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PROGRAMME

1st Beyond Humanism Forum


2nd of July 2020:

YOUTUBE LINK: https://youtu.be/dFzMV_jXaaA

5.45 pm (CET) introduction with Jan Stasienko (Poland), Evi Sampanikou (Greece), Jaime del Val (Spain) and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Italy)

6 pm James Hughes (USA) – The Professional-Managerial Class and the Politicization of Science

6.30 pm Francesca Ferrando, Yunus Tuncel (USA)  in dialogue with Jaime del Val (Spain) and Evi Sampanikou (Greece):  Post-trans-metahumanisms and COVID-19, differences, antagonisms and relations? & BOOK presentations

7 pm Leo Igwe (Nigeria) – Posthuman Perspectives on Covid-19 from Africa & Keoma Ferreira (Brazil) – Is this pandemic crisis provoked only by a biologic virus?

7.30 pm Metahumanism  Discussion – with Jaime del Val (Spain) and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Italy) – Metahumanist Manifesto 10 years/10paragraphs (including Multiversal Declaration of Metahuman Rights, for a Planetary Health by Jaime del Val)

8-9 pm Open discussion between speakers and with audience including Anna Markopoulou Privacy or Freedom? Political and Philosophical implications of the dilemma (Greece)


3rd of July 2020:

YOUTUBE LINK:  https://youtu.be/urJcMzAZAew

11.45 am (CET)  – Introduction with  Evi Sampanikou (Greece), Jaime del Val (Spain) and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Italy)

12 pm  – Stelarc (Australia) – Inverse Desires: Split Bodies, Fractal Flesh and Phantom Glitches

12.30 pm – Sang Wook Yi (South Korea) –  Privacy in the Age of Pandemic

1 pm  Carmel Vaisman (Israel) – The Zoomification of our lives

1’30 pm  Open discussion between speakers and with audience including Yvonne Förster (Germany) –   Embodiment in times for COVID-19 and the accelleration of the digital shift 

2’30-3 pm Performance by Jaime del Val (Spain)
performance/metaformance: Microsexes in times of COVID-19, or how to disaling from fixed perspective – www.jaimedelval.com

4-5’30pm workshop with Jaime del Val – Body Intelligence in times of autonomous algorithms – upon separate inscription here: metabody@metabody.eu

General moderation: Jaime del Val (Spain) and Chryssi Soteriades (Greece),

Discussion and technical moderation: Chryssi Soteriades (Greece), Anna Markopoulou (Greece), Evi Sampanikou (Greece), Jaime del Val (Spain) and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Italy)   

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:

·         STELARC‘S new  Reclining StickMan project and performance: currently exhibiting in the 2020 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art : Monster Theatres, at the Art Gallery of South Australia. It is operational and accessible for online interaction here  recliningstickman.stelarc.org– (only during gallery hours in Adelaide 10am-5pm CET+8) – Images and videos of the project and performance in the website – The performance on the robot was for 5 hours continuously. The artist was able to initiate limb motions with the pneumatic joysticks and improvise with local and remote people who could insert their own movements into the robot.

Credit for Photo: Photographer- Saul Steed

·         METAHUMANIST MANIFESTO 10th ANNIVERSARY: Workshops, talks and performances in Metabody – https://metabody.eu/imf-2020/, www.metahumanism.net
– Inscription for the Forum workshop online 3rd July at 4-5’30pm with Jaime del Val – Body Intelligence in times of autonomous algorithms – metabody@metabody.eu

·         Posthumans go Viral – Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6jO-KdbkU2v2h0CxiyTyHg

7 TRANSVERSAL THEMATIC THREADS:

1. Post-trans-meta-humanisms and COVID-19

·         Are the mass media narratives concerning the pandemic mainly humanistic ones?

·         Is transhumanism radically affirming itself through the pandemic, given the fact that technology corporations and the reliance upon their technologies are affirming themselves in unprecedented manner?

·         What is the place for a critical posthumanistic chance for an awareness of our entanglement with others and the planet, vulnerability and alignments for a paradigm shift that exceeds humanism?

·         What can metahumanism provide in terms of a deeper insight into embodied practices for a change in sensitivity?

2. Surveillance, control and transhumanism

·         Is it justified to increase surveillance for the sake of health? Which are the options? Privacy vs. freedom. Can they be separated? 

·         Ethics of algorithms

·         Autonomous algorithms and big data ethics

·         Use of emotions by power

·         What is the relationship between sovereign necropolitics (administration of death), disciplinary biopolitics (enclosures and optimization of life), and control ontopolitics (digital preemption) in the pandemic and (how) are all of them being reinforced?

3. Planetary health, entangled becomings and critical posthumanism

·         How to promote plurality, justice and a planetary health in times of the pandemic. 

·         Environmental Ethics and the climate crisis. The environmental parameter.

·         Awareness of entanglement with each other and the planet, and what to do about it.

·         Evolution as cooperation and viruses as foundational of biodiversity.

·         Pandemic outbreak and environmental disruption.

4. Embodied experience and the metahumanistic turn

·         How do digital interfaces in confinement affect embodied experiences, affects or cognition?

·         Embodied cognitive approaches to how digital interfaces orient experience.

·         How to have richer embodiments in time of social distance. 

5. Meta-relating in times of COVID-19 (conferencing, working, learning, consuming, prosuming, from home)

·         How to create an online field, an embodied online event, which one travels to?

·         What does an online event miss with regard to a physical one and what to do about it?

·         Can one do critical zooming? Or how to ontohack distant relations. 

6. Metahumanist Manifesto – 10th anniversary

·        10 paragraphs – workshops, performances, alternative modes of thought, movement and perception – www.metahumanism.net

7. Metaglobal dialogues

·         Both the pandemic, the technological revolution and posthuman discourses are evolving differently in diverse regions of the world. These differences expose numerous inequalities inherited from colonialism but also positive senses of diversity and plurality. With participants from Australia, Africa, Asia, South and North America and Europe we would like to account for both the problematic ways in which these processes propagate and the positive variations happening across regions whose division is inherited from a colonial past that can perhaps be redefined towards more plural metaglobal futures.