The Academy of Fine Arts & The Faculty of Humanities are hosting a talk by Reza Negarestani, one of the leading thinkers of our time. Negarestani has not only popularized theory-fiction (Cyclonopedia) but also developed a vast neo-rationalist project on intelligence. In his first-ever lecture in Prague, Negarestani will outline his program of (general) intelligence, as featured in Intelligence and Spirit. Negarestani's lecture will be complemented by a shorter position paper from Václav Janoščík. Mohammad Salemy will moderate this discussion.
This event is funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), project No. 22-17984S: Focal images: Violence and Inhumanism in Contemporary Art and Media Culture and hosted by the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague witch Faculty of Humanities CU.
Reza Negarestani at e-flux, April 2014. Photo: Cog-Comp, CC
As encapsulated in its title, this presentation begins with a reference to Robert Heinlein's science fiction story, All You Zombies, which provides an account of a time-traveling agent who, as a child, quite literally, parents himself while avoiding famous time-traveling paradoxes. Building on the last chapter of Intelligence and Spirit (Urbanomic/Sequence Press/ MIT, 2018) titled "Philosophy of Intelligence," this talk seeks to outline and engage with the problem of intelligence in its natural, historical, and rational manifestations in terms of a depth defined as the proper time of intelligence itself (hermeneutically, logically or computationally understood). Once the problem of intelligence is adequately understood in terms of its space or time, philosophical and political questions regarding the spirit of intelligence, its capacities to bootstrap itself, and its arrival at a concrete self-recognition as intelligence will take new connotations and twists. The talk will provide an account of depth for intelligence within which both bottom-up and top-down, or Epimethean and Promethean dimensions of intelligence, are traditionally understood about how intelligence accesses knowledge and how hindsight or foresight can find their appropriate place in the realms of thinking and doing.
While Reza Negarestani's lecture and his thought, in general, stem from a specific tradition of Western philosophy, most notably the dialectical thread running from Plato to Hegel, or the "Odyssey of Spirit" (Intelligence and Spirit), what does it mean to continue in this European tradition of thought after the Anthropocene, Technocene, and decoloniality? And what does relating to this history signify, particularly in contemporary art, which has strayed from the art's philosophically universalist ambitions to instead empower the local or its indexical presence as opposed to transhistorical? In my response, I will show how art, not merely as a concept but through its actual practice, can re-engage with its speculative potential and offer a non-parochial space for orienting ourselves in the future and the past. In this sense, contemporary art, understood as a space for thought, could provide us with a chronopolitical perspective that, in a peculiar yet important way, complements the philosophical project of Reza Negarestani - hinting towards where we all zombies could come from.
| Event start | 11 October 2024 at 18:30 |
| Event end | 11 October 2024 at 21:00 |
| Type of event | Lecture |
| Organiser | Václav Janoščík, Ondřej Váša |
| Organiser's contact email | ondrej.vasa@fhs.cuni.cz |
| Venue | Academy of Fine Arts (U Akademie 4, 170 00, Praha 7), auditorium |
| Target group | Academic community and public |
Charles University
Faculty of Humanities
Pátkova 2137/5
182 00 Praha 8 - Libeň
Czech Republic
