One of the most serious charges levelled against theories, analyses, and descriptions is that of being reductive. Conceptual frameworks are criticized for being impoverished and descriptions for being too sparse or flat. Conversely, to call something ‘irreducible’ seems to confer an immediate and indisputable dignity to it, pointing to a certain complexity that cannot be fully grasped or explained. Yet the history of knowledge cannot be told without acknowledging the importance of reductionist paradigms. Reduction is also necessary for achieving a clearer, and more complex grasp of ourselves and the world.
This interdisciplinary ICI Fellow workshop will interrogate ‘reduction’ as a concept, as a method, as an experience, as a practice, and as an aesthetic, considering cases where it is taken to signify diminishment and devalorization as well as reduction’s generative potential.
How can reduction give rise to openness and inclusion? What does it mean to perform reduction? How does it relate to our world? How can it be used as a lens for research? And what can it perform as a strategy?
In English
14:00 Opening remarks
14:10 – 15:40
Panel I – Lines, Labels, Names
Sam Dolbear: Lines That Reduce: Palms, Borders, Cosmos
Ben Nichols: Post-anti-identitarianism
Iracema Dulley: The Case and the Signifier: Reflections on the Rat Man
Respondent: Cheryl Mei-ting Schmitz
15:40 Coffee break
16:00 – 18:00
Panel II – Thinking in Cases
Amina ElHalawani: Seeking Home: Vignettes of Homes and Homing
Eylül İşcen: Counter-futuring: The Irreducible Other of Computational Capital
Xenia Chiaramonte: Reduction to Legal Technique
Christopher Chamberlin: Fanon with Lévi-Strauss
14:00 – 16:00
Panel III – Temporalities
Rachel Aumiller: Dwelling in Reduction: A Skeptic’s Guide for Times of Disruption
Sarath Jakka: The Paradox of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Technique: A Musical Analogy
Alberica Bazzoni: Reduction in Time: Kinaesthetic and Traumatic Experiences of the Present
Federica Buongiorno: Reduction in Computer Music: Bodies, Temporalities, and Generative Computation
16:00 Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00 Discussion
With
Rachel Aumiller
Alberica Bazzoni
Federica Buongiorno
Christopher Chamberlin
Xenia Chiaramonte
Sam Dolbear
Iracema Dulley
Amina ElHalawani
Özgün Eylül İşcen
Sarath Jakka
Ben Nichols
Organized by
ICI Berlin
