Lutz Dammbeck at the interface between art and film
What is the connection between computer technology, hippies, psychedelic drugs and terrorism? In 1995, from a single room cabin in an isolated part of Montana, the mathematical genius and former teacher at the University of Berkeley, Ted Kaczynski, mailed his manifesto 'Industrial Society and Its Futures' to the New York Times and the Washington Post, where it was published in September in a desperate attempt to mitigate the domestic terrorism of a mysterious organisation called the Freedom Club. It eventually lead to Kaczynski’s arrest. The Unabomber, as Kaczynski is now known, had been the sole agent of a twenty-year mail-bombing campaign which targeted prominent members of the technology community, eventually killing three people. It was driven by Kaczynski’s dystopian vision of a society inexorably determined by technological progress leading to widespread psychological suffering.
In this final episode of Art and Power, Dammbeck shifts his focus to the USA, exploring the links between the axiomatic philosophical statements of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the sociology of Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as the systems theory of Heinz von Foerster, seeking to place the American exceptionalism of Kaczynski within the expanded techno-industrial environment of the digital age.
Location: PAR-Arts West North Wing-153 (Forum Theatre), Arts West Building
Four screenings of Lutz Dammbeck’s documentary tetralogy Art and Power, curated by Giles Simon Fielke and Nicolas Hausdorf, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and the University of Melbourne.
Event series: Art and Power
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