15th Beyond Humanism Conference

June 24-27, 2025 – University of Paris 8, France

Posthuman Art, Creativity, and Play in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 

Creativity and play are philosophical and cultural categories that go beyond mere activity. They are spaces for experimentation, relationality, and transformation. Art is a dynamic mode of engagement that embodies the tensions between freedom and constraint, spontaneity and system. It is rooted in structures of rules and improvisation. In the era of algorithms, the philosophy of play demands reconsideration, particularly in its intersection with post-, trans, and metahuman creativity. This interplay demands our reflection on the evolving relationships between human and non-human agencies, the aesthetics of co-creation, and the ethics of imaginative practice.

In the context of posthuman thought, play is a central part of an aesthetic in which human decentering, co-creation, and uncertainty are key values. This aesthetic embraces a relational logic in which playfulness is a fertile ground for experimentation, allowing us to reimagine forms of expression and collaboration. Play boldly critiques traditional anthropocentric structures and fosters the emergence of new modes of agentivity, where human and non-human actors co-construct a common space.

As formal structures, games of any kind are based on a set of rules, constraints, and a systemic logic reminiscent of algorithmic protocols, understood as a set of instructions for carrying out a task. Throughout history, however, games have also played a central role in practice-led methodologies and philosophies, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language games or Jacques Derrida’s understanding of concepts as free play with structures.

Artistic examples include the formal constraints imposed by members of the Oulipo and the practices of Fluxus, an artistic movement of the 1960s that proposed “scores” or performative instructions halfway between algorithmic protocol and the act of play.Play was then integrated into participatory performances in which the audience was invited to interact with the materials, blurring the boundaries between artist and audience. Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s notion of ludic fencing refers to a deliberate suspension of reality when immersed in a work of fiction.Digital technologies have reinvigorated algorithmic protocols in posthuman practices, where the human is no longer the sole agent of creation. Algorithms have evolved from simple tools to co-authors. Generative artificial intelligences like GPT or computational art systems like DeepDream, Dall-E, or Midjourney are part of this dynamic. These new tools make us reflect on the post-human future of creativity and creativity in general. The questions we must ask are whether our civilization will reach a state of singularity more quickly (Ray Kurzweil), or whether it will become more of an “entropocene” in Bernard Stiegler’s sense. In the latter case, the technologies we produce will become a source of decay, disintegration, and collapse, and absolute non-knowledge.

In the face of these challenges, activist practices that transcend the Capitalocene social rules and subvert algorithmic dominance will become increasingly important. However, engaging with such a system will require new definitions of creativity and a constant redefinition of the relationship between humans, machines, and the meanings produced by these interactions.

As for contemporary pop art, graphic arts, photography and video art, music, new media art and performing arts, in a video game setting, interaction with recursive neural networks and other emerging technologies complicates identities, practices, and play processes, allowing players to explore a different form of relationship to the world through human-machine interaction.By interacting with algorithms, players co-create a narrative, changing not only the course of the story, but also their perception of themselves as augmented and amputated agents, both real and virtual.The question then becomes: are the players playing, or are they being played? We must invent a new concept to account for this new modality of play, or how modern games navigate between the constraints of ludus and the more open spaces of paidia (Roger Caillois). The system adapts to the player according to a logic of cybernetic control, so what space is left for imagination and creation? In a creative context, to what extent does this decentralization represent a real resubjectification by the machine?

The papers should address the general theme of the conference. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Refining posthuman discourses: Critical, Cultural, Existential, European, Philosophical, Radical, and Speculative Posthumanism.
• Refining transhuman discourses: Classic, silicon-based, carbon-based Transhumanism, and Euro-Transhumanism.
•  Post-, trans-, and metahuman foundations of play.
•  Generative algorithms and post-, trans-, and metahuman methodologies.
•  Ethics and creative agency.
•  Critical Posthumanist and Transhumanist Ethics of Play and Experimentation.
•  Gaming Ethics and Posthuman Agency.
•  Politics of play: technology, autonomy, and control.
•  Redefining identity and agency through play.
•  Virtual and augmented realities: new dimensions of play and identity.
•  Games as Art and Activism.
•  Human and non-human creative collaboration.
•  Generative AI systems as artistic tools.
•  Technological singularity and creativity.
•  Performative arts and generative AI.
•  Non-human aesthetics.
•  Literary depictions of creative automata.
•  Existing and Developing Art Forms and Politics.
•  Emotions and algorithms in political and social contexts.

Abstracts will be reviewed upon receipt.

Deadline for submission : February 28, 2025.

Final notifications will be issued by March 31, 2025.

Deadline for early bird registration: April 30, 2025.

Conference fees

early bird until the end of April
– 120 euros
– 80 euros (PhD students and independent researchers/artists)

regular fee
– 150 euros
– 100 euros (PhD students and independent researchers/artists)

Submission guidelines

We invite paper proposals including a title, an abstract of 350 words, name and affiliation of the author, as well as a short bio with contact information. 

Applications together with a short bio-bibliographical note should be submitted in English and in PDF format before the 28th of February 2025.

Please click on the following link to upload your contribution in one single file (PDF format required): https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=bhc15

 
All those accepted will receive information on the venue(s), local attractions, accommodations, restaurants, and planned events for participants.

Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes. Each presenter will be given 10 additional minutes for questions and discussions with the audience. 

International Scientific Committee

Prof. Arnaud Regnauld, University of Paris 8, France

Prof. Evi Sampanikou, University of the Aegean, Greece

Prof. Sangkyu Shin, Ewha Womans University, South Korea

Prof. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy

Jan Stasieńko., AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland

Local organization and scientific committee – University of Paris 8

2024 14^TH BEYOND HUMANISM CONFERENCE

14회 Beyond Humanism Conference가 이번 7월 초에 폴란드 우치(Łódź)에서 열립니다. 폴란드는 물가가 싸서 비교적 저렴한 비용으로 외국 학회에 참석할 좋은 기회입니다. 많은 분들의 관심을 부탁합니다. http://beyondhumanism.org/

Technologies-Ecologies and the Networks of Posthuman Care

Posthumanities Research Centre
Faculty of Philology
University of Lodz
2-5 July 2024

CONFIRMED KEYNOTES:

ANNE ALOMBERT
https://llcp.univ-paris8.fr/anne-alombert-mcf

FABIENNE BRUGÈRE
https://philosophie.univ-paris8.fr/fabienne-brugere

EDUARDO KAC
https://www.ekac.org

RYSZARD KLUSZCZYŃSKI
https://www.uni.lodz.pl/pracownicy/ryszard-kluszczynski

The images and narratives of crises have dominated the socio-cultural sphere over the last couple of years, often anaesthetizing our senses and creating a further sense of impasse. As Bernard Stiegler asserts, these perplexing conditions require finding out how “to think and care otherwise, that is, to change the very meaning of thinking” (2018: 237). For the philosopher, to think means “to take care, to care for, which is also to say, to act, to do, to make – (the) différance: it would always be to think the wound” (2018: 215). Thus, thinking with care implies taking actions to heighten our responsiveness to the challenges the Anthropocene poses. When discussing Heidegger, Yuk Hui observes that “being-in-the-world is nothing but the question of care (Sorge), or temporality” (2016: 227). Hui observes that, for Heidegger, Sorge constituted a “primordial form of existence” (2016: 246). Derived from Besorgen and linked with Fürsorge, care renders ways of being in the world and interacting with others (Hui, 2016: 246, 274). Referring to Haraway’s claim (2016: 4) that “we become-with each other or not all,” Amelia deFalco in Curious Kin in Fictions of Posthuman Care argues that “[i]f relating produces being, who and what we relate to, care for, and are cared for by has profound consequences” (2023: 5). What is more, deFalco rightly indicates how the narratives of exclusion are interconnected with being regarded as care-capable and care-worthy (2023: 5). Likewise, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa points out that processes of thinking and knowing, which are inherently intertwined with a multitude of relations, encompass care. In her view,  care is thus relational (2012: 198), as acts of care compel us to nurture the relational character of our more-than-human lives. The acknowledgement of our entangled, differential, interconnected lives activates a collaborative spirit of compassion and care to produce ethical actions and practices to shape our posthuman futures. Rosi Braidotiti, in her latest monograph, Posthuman Feminism, urges us that “[w]e need to work together to reconstruct our shared understanding of possible posthuman futures that will include solidarity, care and compassion” (2022: 8). In her 2018 Nobel Lecture, Olga Tokarczuk writes: “Tenderness is spontaneous and disinterested; it goes far beyond empathetic fellow feeling…. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself.” For her, “tenderness is deep, emotional concern about another being,” “human and beyond human,” in general, it is an attitude, action, physical sensation realised, among others, via touch, for instance, in relation to technology (Malinowska 2022: 44). Tenderness permeates all the boundaries of digital and biological, living and non-organic, beyond time and human. It is a click that animates pixels and atoms of water that run through more-than-human beings. In other words, the capacity for care lies in more-than-human milieux if we wish to develop novel, inclusive ways of thinking and writing. It induces the renewal of current forms of planetary co-existence responsible for reproducing enduring patterns of human-induced inequalities and global power imbalances.

In Art and Cosmotechnics, Hui recalls Smith’s claim (2019) that machines entangled in their actions with the world exhibit a form of care by their attempt to “engage and modify it” (2021: 241). On a simple level, care tends to be discussed more in terms of providing than exhibiting. If we assume that care is the category whose importance is recognised in both humanities and sciences, maybe we should think of care and AI beyond care robots, in other words, beyond what machines can do for humans? To what extent can the category of care apply to developing neural networks? The conference wishes to explore how care is implicated in trans-, meta-, post- human philosophies. Sorgner explains that “metahumanism strives to mediate among the most diverse philosophical discourses in the interest of letting the appropriate meaning of relationality, perspective, and radical plurality emerge” (2021: 41). Bearing the “radical plurality” in mind, the conference seeks to study how these philosophies approach diverse forms of organic and non-organic embodiments, raising new ethical, legal and biotechnological dilemmas.

The conference is devoted to the reconceptualization of the posthuman condition brought about by the care turn. We invite you to consider how to invent/create networks of care that could bring hopeful scenarios of endurance and reconstruction of the planetary mayhem.

The papers should address the general theme of the conference. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Posthuman collective networks of care;
• Posthuman care and ageing;
• Posthuman care and climate crisis,
• Posthuman care and technologies of intimacy;
• Posthuman care and feminisms;
• Posthuman care and ethics;
• Posthuman care and digital practices;
• Posthuman care and the Anthropocene;
• Posthuman care and the social media;
• Posthuman care and New Materialisms;
• Posthuman care and NGOs and volunteering;
• Posthuman care and LGBTQ+ communities;
• Posthuman care and disability studies;
• Posthuman care and more-than-human knowledge production;
• Posthuman care and Indigenous studies;
• Posthuman care and non-western knowledge production,
• Posthuman care and performativity;
• Posthuman care and aesthetics;
• Posthuman care and artistic practices;
• Posthuman care  and tender narratives and poetics;
• Posthuman care and technoscientific experimentation;
• Posthuman care and multiple forms of fabulation;
• Posthuman care and speculative genre voices;

Submission guidelines

We invite paper proposals including a title, an abstract of 350 words, name and affiliation of the author, as well as a short bio with contact information. Applications together with a short bio-bibliographical note should be submitted in English and in PDF format on easychair.org before  the 31^st of March

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bhc14

Deadlines

Abstracts should be received by the 31st of March 2024.
Acceptance notifications will be sent out by mid-April 2024.
All those accepted will receive information on the venue(s), local attractions, accommodations, restaurants, and planned events for participants.

Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes. Each presenter will be given 10 additional minutes for questions and discussions with the audience.

Conference fees

100 euros (early bird until the end of April)
140 euros (a regular fee)
80 euros (PhD students)

ORGANISING COMMITTEE:

Stefan Sorgner
Evi Sampanikou 
Sangkyu Shin
Aranaud Regnauld 
Jan Stasieńko
Tomasz Dobrogoszcz (hosting the event)
Katarzyna Ostalska (hosting the event)
Justyna Stępień (hosting the event)

이번 토요일에 열리는 연합 학술대회 개최를 다시 한번 상기시켜드립니다. 많은 분들의 참여를 부탁드립니다.

(학술대회의 자료집은 “온라인 자료실”에서 다운로드 받으실 수 있습니다.)

※ 주제: 포스트휴먼과 신유물론 – 물질, 몸, 도시

※ 주최: 한국포스트휴먼연구회, 한국철학사상연구회, 서울시립대 도시인문학연구소, 숙명여대 인문학연구소 HK+사업단, 중앙대학교 인문콘텐츠 연구소

※ 주관: 성균관대학교 교양기초교육연구소

※ 날짜: 2023년 12월 9일(토) 11:00 – 18:00

※ 장소: 성균관대학교 퇴계인문관 308호 (31308)