LCCA Evening School, 6th season, #1 reading workshop “Immortality, Life and Death in the Age of Posthumanism”

On 26 February at 6 PM, as part of its non-formal education programme, the Evening School, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art invites to the season’s first reading workshop “Immortality, Life and Death in the Age of Post-humanism”. Professor in religious studies and the author of the book “The History of Immortality”, Dag Øistein Endsjø will be a special guest, participating online.

The concept of immortality, also the issues related to technological progress, post-humanism, bioethics, the relationship between life and death in the age when human impact has brought significant changes in a wide range of fields, are becoming increasingly topical both in popular culture and in other fields, including contemporary art. However, immortality as a theme has always been central both in Western and in Eastern cultures – the belief that the physical body can exist indefinitely, has shaped the history of the world and continues to influence modern society. Revisiting distinction between living and non-living, various aesthetic, historical, political and philosophical assumptions are involved in the reflection on immortality. An intriguing view of the concept of immortality can be found in the works of the authors of Russian Cosmism, largely forgotten movement of thought, whose utopian principles, combining Western Enlightenment and Eastern philosophy, Russian Orthodox traditions, and Marxism, inspired several thinkers in the 20th century and today.

Texts:

•

Boris Groys, “Introduction”. Russian Cosmism. e-flux, The MIT Press, 2018, pp. 1–16.

• Alexander Bogdanov, “Immortality Day”, Russian Cosmism. e-flux, The MIT Press, 2018, pp. 215–226.

• Dag Øistein Endsjø, The History of Immortality (Udødelighetens historie, 2016)

To receive the texts, please email to: ieva.ast@gmail.com

The Latvian Center for Contemporary Art within its programme, the Evening School starts its 6th season – series of conversations, talks, discussions and reading workshops or non-academic and informal discussions about seminal texts – devoted to current issues of contemporary art as well as exploration of the recent past. This season will highlight themes, related to the LCCA general event programme in 2019 – social utopias, geopolitical and cultural divisions, migration and politics of memory. The programme is curated by Ieva Astahovska. The LCCA Evening School is curated by Ieva Astahovska; it takes place in the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Alberta iela 13, and its events are free of charge.