Faculty Colloquium: Dissemblage. Making Multiplicity, not Identities

Dissemblage is the second volume in the series Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution. Following on from the first volume DIVIDUUM Gerald Raunig expands his scope of aesthetic experimentation with what philosophy and the creative practice of philosophizing can do. Drawing on a wild range of historical and more contemporary sources like Ibn Daud and other neo-Aristotelian figures of high medieval Spain (al-Andalus) to figures like Wilbirg of St. Florian, Curtis Mayfield, and Nina Simone the book engages scenes of protest against the violence of separation and individualization. In a poetic search for differential attunements and resonances across imposed divides, Dissemblage begs urgent questions of alliance and molecular revolution in times of geopolitical unrest. Focusing on questions of economies of subsistence and ecologies of care, Raunig’s contributions will be met with responses from members of the Promiscuous Care Study Group (Yusser Salih, Michelle Teran, Julia Wilhelm) at Willem de Kooning Academy and ESPhil members Christoph Brunner and Ryan Kopaitich.

Biographies

Gerald Raunig works at the eipcp (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies) as one of the editors of the multilingual publishing platform transversal texts, and at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste as professor for philosophy. Some recent and forthcoming publications: DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Vol.1, translated by Aileen Derieg, New York/Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press 2016; Dissemblage. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Vol. 2, Minor Compositions 2022; upcoming: Making Multiplicity, Polity Press 2024.

Christoph Brunner is Assistant Professor for Philosophy of Media and Technology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research concerns the relations between media and their aesthetics, affective politics, and social movements in networked cultures. He takes a particular interest in practices and positions from the Global South and translocal forms of organizing. Most of his work emerges out of collaborations with critical practitioners.

Yusser Salih (1998) is a decolonial feminist writer and designer who seeks to acknowledge and enable the radical potential of intimate relational spaces. Her practice revolves around intimate forms of publishing and the mobilization of alternative knowledge circulation patterns for writing that sits close to the skin. Her central concern: how can we affirm other ways of being/knowing? 

Michelle Teran (born in Canada) is an educator, artist, and researcher. She is a practice-oriented Research Professor in Social Practices, where she heads the Social Practices research program. Her current and ongoing research areas and interests are critical care and regenerative practices, collective grief, feminist, eco-social, and critical pedagogy. She initiated the Promiscuous Care Study Group, an interdepartmental research group that gathers under the aegis of study using individual and collective care practices as sites of inquiry.

Julia Wilhelm is a cultural worker based in Rotterdam. She is interested in building otherwise infrastructures for coming together, learning with and from each other, and rethinking processes of knowledge creation and circulation. Her projects revolve around intersectional climate justice, ecology, maintenance work, productivity, and the construction of subjectivities. Her affiliations and stewardships include climate justice collective SPIN; embodied research group Cooking Something Up; Nightly Manifesto, a show on WORM Radio; and Reading Rhythms Club, an alternative reading group. She was coordinator for Ultradependent Public School at BAK.