30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Science, Art, and Theory

Symposium

21 – 22 May 2014

Centre for Digital Cultures
Leuphana University of Lüneburg
Postoffice Building, Sülztorstr. 21-25, 2nd floor

This symposium is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Jean-François
Lyotard's exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1985, entitled
Les Immatériaux. The exhibition wanted to demonstrate the emergence of
a new materiality produced by the advancement in telecommunications
technology. The prefix im- announced a break from the modern
conception of material, language, body, science, and art. Les
Immatériaux showed how the desire of modernity produced a negation of
itself and passed on to a new cultural form which Lyotard named
postmodern. The symposium traces the discourses in the exhibition and
its intellectual environment of the late 1970s and 80s, and it
reflects on the new material conditions brought up by digital
technologies in the last 30 years. What kind of sensibility is
appropriate for our current material condition?

The symposium will be held in English. Admission is free.

Programme

13:00 – 14:00 Registration

13:00 – 14:00
Film Screening: Octave au pays des Immatériaux Auteur (dir. Daniel
Soutif; Paule Zajdermann; Francois Kotlarski)

14:00 – 14:30
Introduction (Yuk Hui, Andreas Broeckmann, CDC, Leuphana Universität)

14:30 – 15:30
Jean-Louis Boissier (Paris VIII, France): Scénographie et dramaturgie
des Immatériaux (lecture in French)

15:30 – 16:00 Break

16:00 – 17:00
Charlie Gere (Lancaster University, UK): Voice, Trace and Incarnation
in Relation to Les Immatériaux

17:00 – 18:00
Tim Otto Roth (Artist, Germany): Shadow of a Shadow? – A Physical
Re-Orientation

18:00 – 18:30 Break

18:30 – 19:30
Bernard Stiegler (Centre Pompidou, France) Les Immatériaux are not
immaterial - What does materialism do in the time of the hypermaterial?

Thursday, 22 May

09:30 – 10:30
Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University, Germany): The Materiality of
Immaterial Art

10:30 – 11:30
Francesca Gallo (Rome University, Italy): Contemporary Art at Les
Immatériaux: Yesterday and Today

11:30 – 11:45 Break

11:45 – 12:45
Anne Elisabeth Sejten (Roskilde University, Denmark): Exhibiting and
Thinking: Anamnesis of the Postmodern

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:00
Florian Hecker (Artist, Germany): Reformulation (Lecture Performace)

15:00 – 15:15 Break

15:15 – 16:15
Yuk Hui (Leuphana University, Lüneburg): Anamnesis and
Dis-Orient-ation – A Discourse on Matter and Time

16:15 – 17:15
Robin MacKay (Urbanomics, UK): Immaterials, Between Acceleration and
Anamnesis

17:15 – 18:00
Closing Discussion

Information:
cdc.leuphana.de

Organisation & Contact:
Dr. Andreas Broeckmann, broeckmanninkubator.leuphana.de
Dr. Yuk Hui, yuk.huiinkubator.leuphana.de
Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg,
Scharnhorststr. 1, 21335 Lüneburg

Organised by the Innovation Incubator and the Centre for Digital
Cultures at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, in collaboration with the
Leuphana Arts Program. The Innovation Incubator Lüneburg is an EU
major project supported by the European Regional Development Fund and
the federal state of Lower Saxony.