Hailed by novelists, philosophers, artists, and cinematographers, Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials is a key work in an emerging continental movement in philosophy, “speculative realism.” Cyclonopedia has attracted a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary audience, provoking a vital debate around the relationship between philosophy, geopolitics, geophysics, and the art world. Negarestani's book details a unique philosophy coming from and written on the Middle East. At once a work of speculative theology, a political samizdat, and a philosophic grimoire, it is a middle-eastern Odyssey populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, and corpses of ancient gods.
Leper Creativity: The First international Cyclonopedia Symposium will bring a lively international debate to The New School in a daylong event exploring the inter-relations between Lovecraftian fear/horror/terror, Deleuze and Guattari's nomad A Thousand Plateaus, and the Mille-feuilles/leafs/lepe(r)s* of contemporary media studies as articulated in Negarestani's manuscript.
Scheduled speakers include Alisa Andrasek (Biothing; Architectural Association), Juan Azulay (Matter Management; Southern California Institute of Architecture), Zach Blas (Duke), Benjamin Bratton (D:GP; University of California, San Diego), Melanie Doherty (Wesleyan College), Alexander Galloway (New York University), Kate Marshall (Notre Dame University), McKenzie Wark (The New School), Ben Woodard (European Graduate School); and keynote speaker Robin Mackay (Urbanomic).
New York City, NY; NYC