Have you ever dreamt of transcending your body of flesh and blood? Uploading your brain to the cloud? Transhumanism refers to a philosophical movement that aims to radically enhance the human body with extremely sophisticated technologies.

Whereas transhumanism is associated with a small, privileged groups of tech entrepreneurs, post humanism is taking a less human-centric position. It starts from a perspective that we can employ technology to learn and interact more with our environment and other species. How can we use human technologies to have better connections with other creatures? What will the future of posthumanism look like?

STRP and (IM)POSSIBLE BODIES collaborate to explore future scenarios for cyborgs, trans-, and posthumanism during an online event.

Campaign image © Johanna Bruckner

Johanna Bruckner is an artist and lecturer at institutions including the Bauhaus University of Weimar, the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Zurich University of the Arts. She is interested in emerging labor conditions in response to the technologies of communicative capitalism and in the organization of collective bodies.

Marcel van Brakel is a founder and lead designer at Polymorf, an interdisciplinary Dutch experience design collective. He also works as an independent artist, writer, librettist, and film and theatre director reflecting on the now, the (post)human condition, and the shifting relationships between humans, technology and ecology.

Iris van der Tuin is Professor of Theory of Cultural Inquiry at Utrecht University and Director of its School of Liberal Arts. She is interested in humanities scholarship that traverses the ‘two cultures’ and reaches beyond the boundaries of academia.

Roanne van Voorst is a researcher, writer, (Tedx)speaker and moderator. As an ‘anthropologist of the future’, her core research focuses on what she calls ‘sustainable humanity’: in times of robotification, what makes us human? How will we live, love and make a living in the nearby future?

Moderator of this evening is Annemarie Wisse.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, STRP decided to focus the 2020-21 annual program on the tension between individuality and collectivity. STRP wonders how we can become a better individualist serving the collective, and how technology can help us with this?