Dr. phil. in art. Erich Pick
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hanne Loreck, Second Referee: Prof. Dr. em. Susanne von Falkenhausen
Disputation on 17 October 2018
Biotopia. Architecture, Biopolitics und Technology at Frederick Kiesler, Greg Lynn and Lars Spuybroek
Artistic-architectural design of space and the social formation of subjects are in close interrelation. Current variants of the organicism play an important role in this by aiming with their holistic claim to an ecological holistic social life.
»Biotopia« undertakes the partly speculative attempt to combine artistic artifacts with the power and governmental dispositions, which are interwoven in the life sciences. Biopolitics serves as a conceptual theorem, with which the bundle of power and government techniques can be analyzed, which aims at the survival and the regulation of social life as a whole and tries to gain control over individual social individuals. The addition of an affect theory enables the study of how works of art have an effect on subjects. After all, the affective forces emanating from the artifacts have power to define what is perceived as a life value and thus also as a non-life value. Beyond an aesthetic-formal and monographic view at the artistic works, the dissertation undertakes a (political) reflection of the theoretic self-positioning of the artists.
Personal background
Erich Pick is a visual artist, author and curator with works on the aesthetics of spaces, topology, architecture and urbanism. He studied Fine Arts at the HFBK Hamburg (Diploma 2007), Mechanical Engineering Energy Engineering (Diploma 1998), and Philosophy at the University of Essen. His artistic work comprises and combines plastic-installational approaches as well as the medias video and audio. He regularly published in the field of technology impact assessment.
From 1998 to 2002 he was research assistant at University of Essen, from 2011 to 2013 Erich was 2010 research assistant at HFBK Hamburg, Department Theory and History of Art. From 2011 to 2013 he was a lecturer in the film section of the Hamburg Media School. Since 1998 he is member of Doktoranden-Netzwerk Nachhaltiges Wirtschaften e.V. (Phd Network for Sustainable Economic Management). He did research stays in València (Spain), New Delhi, and Istanbul.