Ana Teixeira Pinto

Around the mid-nineteenth century what had hitherto been described as a multiplicity of physical forces, was unified under the novel concept of energy. Working in tandem with, and under the aegis of, the transition to fossil fuel consumption, this reduction of multiple forces to one single unifying concept also entailed the suggestion that turning the compressed time of fossil deposits into the accelerated time of propulsion engines was not simply an economic but a moral imperative. Mobilizing the physical world on behalf of imperial policy, Victorian physics also helped intensify already ongoing processes of racialization. The talk will survey the ways through which language worlds, or unworlds, by detailing the usages of reduction, conflation, equivocation, and allegory, in and beyond the natural sciences.

Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a guest professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg (AdBK) and a theory tutor at the Dutch Art Institute. Her writings have appeared in publications such as Third Text, Afterall, e-flux journal, Manifesta Journal, and Texte zur Kunst. She is the editor of a forthcoming book series on the antipolitical turn to be published by Sternberg Press. Together with Kader Attia and Anselm Franke, she is organizing the conference and podcast series The White West: Whose Universal, taking place at HKW Berlin, and she is a member of the 2022 Berlin Biennial artistic team.

In English

How to attend

• In-person at ICI Berlin: Please submit your reservation request, using the form below.
• Public livestream (no registration required) on this page with the possibility to ask questions via chat.