DISSECT

Joffrey Becker obtained a PhD in social anthropology and ethnology from the EHESS, and is a research associate of the anthropology of life team at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (Collège de France). His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence, and more particularly on the relationship between humans and machines. Initially interested in the construction procedures of humanoid robots and the mental processes they bring into play in interaction situations, his work today aims to better understand how so-called intelligent systems question our models on an ontological, interactional and societal level, regardless of their form. In a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and critical perspective, the challenge is to study how objects resulting from robotics and artificial intelligence transform relationships and practices in order to better anticipate their effects.

Maaike Bleeker is a theatre studies professor, a dramaturg, and a translator. Her work combines approaches from the arts and performance studies with insights from philosophy, media theory, and cognitive science. Much of her research focuses on processes of embodied and technologically mediated perception and transmission, with a special interest in the relationship between technology, movement, and embodied perception and cognition. Current research subjects include social robotics, spectacular astronomy and the intersection of performance studies and space studies, posthuman performativity, corporeal literacy, digital archiving of artistic work, and artistic creation processes.

Samuel Bianchini is an Artist and Associate Professor at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs – Paris (EnsAD)/ PSL Université de recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres and and Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Supporting the principle of an »operational aesthetic«, he works on the relationship between the most forward-looking technological »dispositifs«, modes of representation, new forms of aesthetic experiences, and sociopolitical organizations, often in collaboration with scientists, and natural science and engineering research laboratories. His works are regularly shown in Europe and across the world. After defending his PhD thesis in an art center with a solo exhibition, and, more recently, his accreditation to supervise research, Samuel Bianchini is now the head of the Reflective Interaction research group at EnsadLab, the laboratory of EnsAD, and the Co-Director of the »Chaire Arts & Sciences« recently founded with École Polytechnique and the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. He is a member of the SACRe Laboratory of PSL University and involved in its doctoral program for which he supervises the PhD in Art and Design. He is also member of the canadian research-creation network Hexagram.

Margrit Shildrick is a Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production at ERG, Stockholm University, and Visiting Professor of Critical Disability Studies at York U., Toronto. Margrit does research in recent Continental Philosophy, Ontology, Epistemology, and Bioethics. Her new book Visceral Prostheses, biotechnologies, and posthuman embodiment (Bloomsbury) has been published in 2022. She is currently working on a project on decolonizing the gift in a posthuman context.

Patricia Ribault is a professor for »Performative Design Research« in the Department of Theory and History at weißensee school of art and design berlin and was most recently Junior Professor for History and Theory of Gestaltung at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She was involved in the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung, the forerunner of Matters of Activity, for which she is also a Principal Investigator. Patricia Ribault started her career in design, ceramics, and glassblowing and her research interests cover the fields of design, craft, art, body, work, technology, industry. Since 2011 she has also been leading a master’s seminar at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.