Mikkel Rørbo
Mikkel Rørbo is an interdisciplinary researcher and, sometimes, artist and curator. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures and holds degrees in philosophy and cultural studies from University of Copenhagen. His work focuses on the philosophical dimensions of living with machine intelligences and speculative methods for critical engagement with emerging technologies. As an artist and curator, he has performed, released and exhibited internationally as well as collaborated with institutions, festivals and art spaces. He has written about and presented work on technology, philosophy and contemporary experiments in music.
Contact
Office Hours: by Appointment
Email: mikkel.rorbo[at]uni-ak.ac.at
Showroom: Mikkel Rørbo
- title
- The Blackened Specters of Depth
- type
- Lecture
- keywords
- Philosophy, Inhumanism, Petromodernity
- texts
- Description
- Framed as a revisitation of Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (re.press, 2008), a book in which the logic of petroleum extraction serves as a theoretical and fictional device to connect the socio-political dynamics of the Middle East, the War on Terror, Capitalism, and modern and archaic myths of creation, this presentation focuses on a different angle concerning the cryptic tales of petromodernity or modernity at large. Petroleum or Napht (from the Avestan word naftah, meaning a blackened moisture that suddenly conflagrates) will be introduced within the tradition of alchemical works (L'Œuvre au noir, Marguerite Yourcenar), their influence on painting practices, and the early psychoanalytic tradition as advanced by the likes of Sandor Ferenczi and Otto Rank. The origin of the (petro-)modern subject of planet Earth will be traced back to deep origins, where the nested concatenations of cosmological traumas shape the figure of the contemporary human.
- lecturers
- Reza Negarestani
- title of event
- The Blackened Specters of Depth
- organisers/management
- Mikkel Rørbo, Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Angewandte PeterWeibelForschungsinstitut
- contributors
- Stephen Zepke
- Introduction, Moderation
- date, time and location
- date
- 2024-10-09
- time
- 18:00:00 - 20:00:00
- location
- Universität für angewandte Kunst in Wien, Wien, Austria
- location description
- Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab
- URL
- https://ail.angewandte.at/program/the-blackened-specters-of-depth