Inspired by…

Art Laboratory Berlin is delighted to invite you to take part in our discursive format – a reading club, curated by Tuçe Erel. It takes place in tandem with our colloquium, curated by Regine Rapp.

Inspired by… is an event series, a hybrid format derived from reading group and artist talk formats. In each session, an invited artist will choose a specific text or excerpt from a book that was inspirational for the artist’s practice and/or a particular project that the artist will introduce.

The project follows up Tuçe Erel’s Posthumanism Reading Group, organised between 2018-2020. After co-reading and discussing plenty of seminal texts in two years, the club is transforming into a new discussion, presentation and reading program, an online and offline exchange platform in a non-hierarchical and non-institutional infrastructure in the fields of arts, science and technology.

Guest Artist on 1 October 2024

Aslı Dinç

On 1 October 2024, Inspired by… welcomes Aslı Dinç. Inspired by cyberfeminism and tech-capitalism, she crafts playgrounds using speculative and dystopian narratives as tools for resistance. Her approach involves simulating and shape-shifting to explore and question existing structures and systems. In this session of Inspired by… Aslı selected Future Mutation: Technology, Shanzai and the Evolution of Species by Anna Greenspan and Suzanne Livingston for a collective reading to refer to Aslı’s artistic research and practice. This book delves into cybernetics and emerging technologies in the rapidly changing landscape of Shenzhen, China, while drawing parallels between technological mutations and evolutionary biology.

Aslı, who is narrating the uncovering of the lurking pieces of the present within the future, draws on the quote “the future of the future is present” as one of the key reference points of the Future Mutations alongside her research into cybernetics, power structures, and human-machine hybridity.

Aslı Dinç is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. Her artistic research and narrative are deeply influenced by sci-fi culture, RPGs, cybernetics, interconnected networks and power. These influences, along with gamer theory, hacker culture, and the deep sea milieu, shape her practice. Aslı is a member of the PASAJ independent art space and the international performance art platform Performistanbul. Her works have been featured in venues and festivals, including Ars Electronica, Linz (2023); IMPAKT, Antwerp, (2023); FutureFantastic, Bangalore (2022); HKW, Berlin (2022); UdK, Berlin (2022); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022); and VECTOR FESTIVAL: Network Dependencies, Toronto (2021).

Reading Material

Greenspan, Anna, and Suzanne Livingston. Future Mutation: Technology, Shanzai and the Evolution of Species. e-book, 1st edition. Timespiral Press, 2015.

Venue: Zoom meeting link and the texts will be shared with the registered participants.

Inspired by… reading club meetings are not recorded to create a safer space for guest artists and participants to talk about their practice.