Radical Natural

Otherness stands at the core of the Berliner cultural landscape. Acting both above and underground, at the center and at the periphery, the landscape of Berlin constitutes a topological system of narratives, each defining a specific approach to a technologized nature, or as the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon defines it “a second nature”.

In this seminar, we reviewed and analyzed a series of postwar landscapes that have contributed to the emergence of Berlin’s manifold identities. These ecologies were reviewed in context of their political and environmental regimes, and were analyzed through technological and scientific models. Bridging theories and field studies, this seminar elaborates on Simondon’s notion of techno-aestheticism, which spans nature’s formal and sensorial dimensions as a technical object.