Wissen um 11: Decolonial immersions in VR – Diving into visual worlds from African contexts

On Saturday, 7 March at 11 a.m., Dr Cornelia Lund will give a lecture at Wissen um 11 entitled ‘Decolonial Immersions in VR – Diving into Visual Worlds from African Contexts’. Dr Cornelia Lund is an art, film and media scholar and curator. She has been researching and teaching for years with a focus on audiovisual artistic practices, documentary practices, design theory, and de- and postcolonial theories (including HTW Berlin, FH Salzburg, HU Berlin, University of Windsor (ON), USP São Paulo). Since 2004, she has been co-director of fluctuating images (Berlin), an independent and non-commercial platform for media art, music and design (www.fluctuating-images.de). Since 2021, she has been a research fellow at the University of the Arts Bremen.

The lecture
Mainstream narratives about the latest technological developments in AI (artificial intelligence), XR (extended reality) or VR (virtual reality) often range from a modernist affirmation of technology as ‘faster, better, more’ to dystopian disaster scenarios. However, these developments have long since become part of a differentiated discursive and artistic debate. The lecture focuses on artistic projects from African contexts that use VR to counter historically established, hegemonic narratives shaped by colonial ways of thinking. The use of VR technologies is interwoven with aesthetic counter-strategies such as reminiscences of Afrofuturism or speculative storytelling and the latest neuroscientific or technological research in order to reflect on the emergence of computer science or the legacy of technopolitics in Africa.

On Saturday, 14 March, Nora Leonie Rust will give a lecture entitled ‘From the reef to the living room: paths to a fair and sustainable ornamental fish trade’.