Superhumanity: Design of the Self book launch at Miss Read 2018

On Friday, May 4, at 5:30pm e-flux Architecture will present and discuss Superhumanity: Design of the Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt as the opening event of Miss Read 2018. Join Superhumanity editors Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, and Mark Wigley along with special guests Julieta Aranda, Simon Denny, Anselm Franke, and Marion von Osten for presentations and a conversation celebrating the print publication of the original 50 contributors to the Superhumanity project.

The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes.

Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than 50 essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others? This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life.

Superhumanity is a project by e-flux Architecture initiated at the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, produced in cooperation with the Istanbul Design Biennial, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand, and the Ernst Schering Foundation. Since then, Superhumanity events have taken place in Istanbul at the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial; in New York at e-flux; in Havana at Artista x Artista on Cuban modernity; in Princeton at Princeton University on Cosmism; in Seoul at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea on Post-Labor, Psychopathology, and Plasticity; and in Madrid at the Madrid Design Week on social media.

In early 2018, with support from the Graham Foundation, the original 50 contributions were published by the University of Minnesota Press as Superhumanity: Design of the Self. Later in 2018, with support from the Spanish Embassy in Seoul, Superhumanity: Post-Labor, Psychopathology, Plasticity will be published by Actar Publishers, featuring ten contributions to the Seoul symposium.