ACTIONING SUMMIT 5: How to think through/as more-than-human intelligence

The fifth ACTIONING SUMMIT will tackle the methodological questions surrounding more-than-human intelligence with experts James Bridle, Michael Marder (UPV/EHU), Laura Tripaldi (NYU Shanghai), and Anna Tsing (UC Santa Cruz).

Interventions by Catherine Griffiths (GSAPP, Catherine Griffiths), Marina Otero (GSAPP), Lindy Roy (GSAPP, Roy Projects), Anthony Vanky (GSAPP), Michael Wang (GSAPP).

This lecture will be hosted in Wood Auditorium at Columbia GSAPP and live-streamed on GSAPP’s YouTube channel.

James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. They are the author of ‘New Dark Age’ (2018) and ‘Ways of Being’ (2022), and they wrote and presented “New Ways of Seeing” for BBC Radio 4 in 2019.

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Global Reconstitution (IGRec), Berlin. His writings span the fields of ecological theory, phenomenology, and political thought. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and monographs, including Plant-Thinking (2013), The Philosopher’s Plant (2014), Dust (2016), Energy Dreams (2017), Heidegger (2018), Political Categories (2019), Pyropolitics (2015, 2020), Dump Philosophy (2020), Hegel’s Energy (2021), Green Mass (2021), Philosophy for Passengers (2022), The Phoenix Complex (2023), Time Is a Plant (2023), and Casey, Plants in Place (2024).

Laura Tripaldi is a transdisciplinary researcher currently working as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Interactive Media Arts Department of NYU Shanghai. She has a background in Chemistry and holds a PhD in materials science and nanotechnology. Intersecting science, philosophy, and speculative thinking, her research focuses on materiality, its cultural implications, and technological futures. She is the author of the book “Parallel Minds. Discovering the Intelligence of Materials”, published in English by Urbanomic in 2022.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Niels Bohr Professor in the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University in Denmark. She is the author of In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (1993), Friction (2005) and The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015).

The ACTIONING SUMMITS are an unprecedented effort to affirm how architecture, planning, development, and preservation are anticipating desirable and alternative futures. During a period of eight months, these summits will convene activists, architects, artists, designers, developers, ethnographers, historians, planners, policymakers, politicians, thinkers, and community organizers from around the world to address together eight crucial methodological shifts in the way the disciplines of the built environment operate and collaborate with each other.

The summits will offer a space and opportunity to situate specialized knowledge within specific histories and contexts. During the ACTIONING SUMMITS, participants will discuss a concrete methodological shift elaborated through the tools, practices, protocols, and forms of engagement that have unfolded as part of specific projects or processes they have actively participated in.

Please visit GSAPP’s event calendar to learn more about each ACTIONING SUMMIT. All summits will be live streamed on GSAPP’s YouTube channel.

The ACTIONING SUMMITS are curated by Andrés Jaque, Dean, and Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery.