Rosi Braidotti – Future Relics: Bell Jars, Black-Outs, and Biomes
Rosi Braidotti (photograph by Sjaak Ramakers)
In this lecture, philosopher Rosi Braidotti traces how sound, silence, and ecological transformation mark the material conditions of life beyond the human. Drawing on the bell as one of humanity’s earliest communication technologies—bodies of metal encoded with signals, pulled by ropes, engineered to resonate—she explores how elemental matter becomes cosmic transmission.
The lecture moves between bell jars, black-outs, and biomes: from the fire-forged materiality of bells to their airborne resonance; from the fragility of technological systems to the self-organizing vitality of living matter. What emerges is a meditation on disruption and recomposition—where posthuman imaginaries are rooted in the tangible: the sonic, the planetary, the more-than-human.
A conversation with Claire Isabel Webb, director of Future Humans at the Berggruen Institute, will follow.
This event will be held in English and recorded.
About the Speakers
Rosi Braidotti is a feminist Continental philosopher, Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Honorary Professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She holds degrees in philosophy from the ANU and the Sorbonne and honorary degrees from Helsinki (2007) and Linkoping (2013). She is an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) and a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2022 she received the Humboldt Research Award for life-long contribution to scholarship. Braidotti’s main publications are: Nomadic Subjects (2011a), and Nomadic Theory (2011b), Columbia University Press. The Posthuman, 2013, Posthuman Knowledge, 2019; Posthuman Feminism, 2022 Polity Press. The Posthuman Glossary (2018) and More Posthuman Glossary (2022), Bloomsbury Academic.
Claire Isabel Webb directs the Future Humans program at the Berggruen Institute, where she explores the radical transformations shaping life, mind, and outer space. Her work bridges speculative science, the history of technology, and experimental storytelling. Webb holds a PhD from MIT’s Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS). Her forthcoming book, Reflexive Alienation, traces how scientists have developed experimental practices to anticipate alien life—even in the face of its enduring unknowability.
About the Berggruen Institute
Since its founding, the Berggruen Institute has forged new conceptual frameworks to meet the challenges and harness the opportunities of the arriving future. As an independent think and action tank, it has the autonomy to step outside the usual lanes, reaching beyond academic disciplines to bridge social divides, partisan dispositions, and cultural boundaries. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
The Berggruen Institute has engaged in cross-disciplinary dialogue with policymakers, scientists, AI researchers, philosophers, artists, and world leaders, contributing to global discussions on governance, artificial intelligence, planetary-scale computation, and posthuman futures.
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