Knowledge at 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 surrounding the latest technological developments in AI (artificial intelligence), XR (extended reality) and VR (virtual reality) often range from a modernist embrace of technology based on the mantra ‘faster, better, more’ to dystopian disaster scenarios. But beyond that, 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.
Important information
‘Wissen um 11’ (Knowledge at 11) is a science matinee in Bremen, where exciting and current topics from the world of science are presented every Saturday at 11 a.m. in thirty-minute segments, occasionally filmed and published on our YouTube channel. Admission is free.
