The Synthetic Sacred is a new action-research initiative curated by Lucy Rose Sollitt that explores pathways for ecological restoration amidst hybridity. For this episode, we consider biotechnologies within the context of indigineous cosmologies. Might reframing biotechnologies in the context of the sacred web of life be useful in guiding innovation towards the creation and restoration of flourishing and generative ecologies? 

When formulated within the modern paradigm the products of biotech tend towards the extraction, alienation and entrapment of life, both natural and synthetic. These tendencies disregard (willfully or otherwise) knowledge of the intricate web of life found in many indigenous cosmologies, whereby each living thing is able to fulfil its (sacred) purpose within the ecology it is part of.

Episodes 19 and 20 of Talking Culture are dedicated to the new action-research initiative 'The Synthetic Sacred', which explores pathways for ecological restoration amidst hybridity. The initiative has been curated by Lucy Rose Sollitt and supported by the Goethe-Institut London. 

The notion of 'The Synthetic Sacred' is both a provocation and an attempt to forge sustainable narratives and practices. Weaving together posthuman and Indigenous knowledge systems, the initiative explores the sacred to transform fractured relations with nature and resist capitalist-colonialist extraction and alienation. It proposes the sacred as a framework to guide and detoxify our synthetic creations, ensuring all ecologies flourish. 

For this episode, we are joined by Professor of Biology at Tuft's University, Mike Levin, conceptual artist, Agnieszka Kurant, and the Director of the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Johannes Vogel. Together, we explore what becomes of nature when life is synthetic and ask what role biotech can play in ecological restoration. 

Gugulethu Duma aka Dumama is a musician, composer, sonic poet and creative producer from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Her practice plays with the deconstruction and critique of archaic modes of representation in Southern African/African sonic and performance culture, while also composing music for herself and others.

For this episode, she will discuss her journey with the Goethe-Institut's grants and residency programmes, and the complex poetics of curating in a space scarred by colonialism and apartheid. Gugulethu will welcome us into her multidisciplinary world to vindicate the healing power of her cultural practices and the challenges encountered along the way.

(Re-)Collecting Europe is a residency programme devised by the Goethe-Institut London, which gave two journalists the opportunity to travel through the UK for four weeks. It aimed to reach emerging journalistic voices, encouraging critical thinking and creative debate. Against the backdrop of the UK’s departure from the EU the journalists-in-residence examined the social and cultural impact Brexit had on the civil society in the UK.

For this episode, we speak to Marta Bausells about her residency written piece: Cold Tea, what it means to be European three years after Brexit and creative writing endeavours.

For this episode, Esther Leslie and Louis Porter join us to unpick the mind of one of the 20th century's greatest thinkers Walter Benjamin. In 1935, he wrote an essay called 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction'. During the episode, we reflect on some of the core ideas from the text and apply them to modern-day cultural phenomenons, from machine translation to grand-scale digital art exhibitions. 

This podcast episode is the first podcast episode of the Lives of Objects series. We invited multidisciplinary artists Gala Porras-Kim and James Webb to discuss the ways in which we think about the lives of objects through an artistic lens. The two focus on objects and artefacts with historical, socio-political, and spiritual importance. 

Through a series of extraordinary sound recordings, Dr. Matthew Herbert pushed us to hear further than we might have thought possible, asking the question: “How can systemic listening lead to meaningful action?”

To celebrate 60 years of the Goethe-Institut London, we held three Goethe Annual Lectures in 2022. For our third, we invited Dr. Matthew Herbert for his talk “Beyond Hearing”. The talk was moderated by Ella Finer, whose work in sound and performance spans writing, composing, and curating with a particular interest in how women’s voices take up space; how bodies acoustically disrupt, challenge, or change occupations of space.

Matthew Herbert is a musician, artist, producer and writer whose range of innovative works extends from numerous albums (including the much-celebrated Bodily Functions) to Ivor Novello nominated film scores (Life in a Day) as well as music for the theatre, Broadway, TV, games and radio. He has performed solo, as a DJ and with various musicians including his own 18 piece big band all round the world from the Sydney opera house, to the Hollywood Bowl and created installations, plays and operas. He has remixed iconic artists including Quincy Jones, Serge Gainsbourg, and Ennio Morricone and worked closely over a number of years with musical acts as diverse as Bjork and Dizzee Rascal.

In her talk, “The Culture of Artificial Intelligence”, Mercedes Bunz explores the particular power of AI systems using work from contemporary artists to reveal the human misunderstanding regarding AI.

To celebrate 60 years of the Goethe-Institut London, we held three Goethe Annual Lectures in 2022. For our second GAL, we invited Professor Mercedes Bunz to discuss “The Culture of Artificial Intelligence”. In her talk, she explores the particular power of AI systems using work from contemporary artists to reveal the human misunderstanding regarding AI. The talk was moderated by Eva Jäger, curator of Arts Technologies at Serpentine.

Mercedes Bunz is a professor in Digital Culture and Society at the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. She studied Philosophy, Art History, and Media Studies at the FU Berlin and the Bauhaus University Weimar, and wrote her thesis on ‘The history of the internet-driven by a deep curiosity about digital technology'. Until today, she has not been disappointed by the transforming field that is digital technology, which provides her reliably with new aspects to think constantly about. At the moment, that is Artificial Intelligence and ‘machine learning’. Delving into the topics of AI and ‘machine learning’, Bunz co-leads the Creative AI Lab, a collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery, London.

As German writer Mithu Sanyal confirms, it's a preconceived idea that love and politics don't go together. They are in fact polar opposites. Moreover, love has become a dirty word in politics. We can talk on social media about sex till the cows come home, but love, it's too cute, too lovey-dovey, and too unpolitical.

In light of recent events, a discussion about the role of love in our world seems more relevant than ever before. But this isn’t the romantic notion of love we are more commonly familiar with, it’s the love that cultural scientist and journalist Mithu Sanyal claims is sorely lacking in our world. A political love. It's the absence of this love that she believes is responsible for so much social injustice and inequality.

What exactly is a quantum computer? Have you ever wondered what all the media hype is about or how quantum computing may impact our everyday lives? In this episode, we talk to quantum expert Emily Haworth, curator Lucy Rose Sollitt and Professor Eduardo Miranda to learn about quantum technologies and the arts.

Over the coming weeks, the Goethe-Institut will explore these questions and more under the umbrella of a new project and international events series called ‘Living in a Quantum State’. Events in London, Dublin, Beijing and San Francisco will explore the role of civil society in regulating emerging technologies and examine how the arts may help us to communicate and understand these major scientific advances. In this podcast, we are diving right into the core of this complex theme to explore the possibilities and challenges that quantum computing will bring.

For more information and all event listings, see Goethe.de/quantum or follow @livinginaquantumstate on Instagram.

Imagine life beyond crises. A world beyond catastrophe, wars and climate crisis. How would you like to live? And now think ahead to 2050. Looking back on your present self, how would you have wanted to have lived? In this episode we talk to curator and project developer Isabel Raabe of Talking Objects Lab and curator and dance dramaturg Thomas Schaupp, one half of the curatorial team behind Goethe Morph* Iceland: How we always wanted to have lived. Leading up to and during September 2022, the project invites the public to envision alternative ways of living together through exhibitions, workshops, performances and conversations.

And with Isabel and Thomas’ involvement at the heart of the programme, we thought it would be a good idea to talk to them about things like food, decolonisation and creating a common positive future.

If you’re interested to find out more about the project, visit www.goethe.de/morphiceland.

Author and curator Dan Hicks, best known for his book The Brutish Museums (2020), takes stock of the debate around the enduring legacies of empire in our museums, universities and society at large. In this episode, he talks about recent events in Europe and North America, from removing statues and un-naming buildings to returning artefacts from colonial museums. As a society how can we make amends for the past? And what are the next steps for upholding antiracism in the future?

In 2013, the German Museums Association (Deutscher Museumsbund) issued guidance on the treatment of human remains in museum collections, in which they introduced a novel concept. The idea of 'Unrechtskontext' (context of injustice) should, they suggested, guide curatorial ethics when assessing the circumstances in which museum collections were acquired. Among considerations here was not just the contexts of the past, but also whether any particular injustice 'continued to have an effect in the present'.

For the Goethe Annual Lecture 2021, Dan Hicks posed the following questions: How should we understand the 'Unrechtskontexte' of colonial legacies today? By the standards of the time - or by the values that we hold today? And how can these legacies be meaningfully dismantled?

The Goethe-Institut London and the Somerset House Studios are collaborating to establish a new international artist residency programme to support a Germany-based artist working at the intersection of music, art and technology.

For the inaugural edition from October 2021 we invited Berlin-based and Texas-born DJane, writer and performer Juliana Huxtable for the residency. Time to discuss her influences, visions, opinions, but also the current situation of clubbing in a global pandemic for a brief moment on a cloudy Thursday afternoon in South Kensington, London.

“Going Green and the SouthKenGreenTrail - a greener infrastructure for a sustainable metropolis”. A podcast with artist Natalie Taylor, the architecture and design collective Urban Radicals and landscape architect Adam Harris.

In the summer of 2020, British author and broadcaster John Kampfner released a new book with a provocative title... . In this episode, we share his 2019 Brady Lecture with the same title: . And yes, the title made us a bit uncomfortable too. But don’t worry; this isn’t an episode about one nation being superior to any others; it’s about what democratic countries in the West can learn from a unified Germany that they helped to create.

With Brexit in the rear view, the decades-long discussion and debate about the role and purpose of the European Union has taken on a new urgency. In this episode, we ask two young intellectuals–one from the UK and one from Germany–to reflect on what Europe means to them. Alice Boyd is a composer, theater maker and environmental campaigner from the UK. Simon Strauß is a German historian, writer and journalist. Both were born into the European Union and have used their work to think critically about what it means now and what it can mean.

Art has the power to change the world by highlighting critical issues, but what responsibility does the art world have to make their own changes and take inventory of internal practices that are unsustainable or inequitable, to address the environmental cost of putting on exhibitions? In this episode, Iwona Blazwick, Director of the renowned Whitechapel Gallery in East London, grapples with these questions on the future of museums and galleries. Transcript available at goethe.de/uk/podcast

The creative writing of Black feminist authors has revolutionary potential. It challenges dominant assumptions and expands the horizons of the current literary audience. In this episode, activist and author Sharon Dodua Otoo honours her literary ancestors and mentors, condemns the racist structures that deprived them of deserved praise during their lifetimes, and explores how Black feminist creative writing can move our society forward. Transcript available at goethe.de/uk/podcast

Now, as the world is facing a new economic crisis, how could the arts and civil society benefit from blockchain technologies? Hear from artists, curators, technologists and researchers who are using blockchain to revolutionise their way of working. This episode features Ruth Catlow, artistic director of Furtherfield, Ben Vickers, CTO at the Serpentine Galleries, and artist collectives from Berlin to Moscow who are part of the DAOWO Global Initiative. Transcript available at goethe.de/uk/podcast

One month into the first lockdown of 2020, we called Kris Nelson, Artistic Director and CEO at LIFT:the London International Festival of Theatre, to find out how theatres and their people were surviving. In this episode, we’re returning to that conversation because it captures a unique moment in the pandemic upheaval, and we’re calling Kris once again–a year later–to find out what has changed and how his predictions for theatre have shifted. Transcript available at goethe.de/uk/podcast