Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design

Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley will give a joint performance/presentation on their new yellow book Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design. They curated the 3^rd Istanbul Design Biennial around this question, resulting in an ambitious series of exhibitions, symposia, publications and on-line experiments exploring the intimate and strange relationship between human and design. Colomina and Wigley began with the provocation: ‘design always presents itself as serving the human but its real ambition is to redesign the human.’ During this event, Colomina and Wigley will give a taste of their recently published “field notes” that reach beyond the Biennial to rethink our species and - as true archaeologists - unveil the way design has gone viral and is now bigger than the world. They range across the last few hundred thousand years and the last few seconds to scrutinize the uniquely plastic relation between brain and artifact. A vivid portrait emerges. Design is what makes the human. It becomes the way humans ask questions and thereby continuously reinvent themselves but it is also the way the species anesthetizes itself against the shock of such radical transformations.

Please join us for the presentation and discussion.