Energetic Transfers: Technics, Ethics, and Production
Symposium organized by Alena Williams, Professor for Theory and Mediation of Contemporary Art, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies in collaboration with eikones - Center for the Theory and History of the Image, Universität Basel and the NOMIS Foundation; in partnership with Museum Tinguely Basel.
Energetic Transfers investigates twentieth-century modernity and technics with particular attention to the relationship between labor, ethics, and the physical sciences. This symposium explores how conceptions of energetic transfer—the displacement of subject and object positions with respect to an electromotive force—might be productive for experimental thinking in aesthetics, philosophy, and radical politics. It seeks to excavate the longstanding affective, political, or intersubjective nature of energetic transfers that the modern sciences have rendered nearly invisible, and that are routinely subject to capitalist capture. Exploring a broad spectrum of biopolitical relations and subjectivities as well as the sensorium of the nervous system, the symposium investigates which scientific, theoretical, and speculative ideas in energy politics, theories, and technics have been discontinued and which persist. It also explores which energetic transfers evade scientific and aesthetic representation and how they might relate to the work of philosophers, activists, artists, and filmmakers.
This event is part of the Cultural Studies Excursion course of the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies, co-led by Alena Williams and Emily Wardill, Professor for Art and Film in the Institute for Fine Arts in Winter Semester 2026/27 to explore points of relation and discovery between two milieu—art history and art production—focalizing on the physical sciences and cinematic forms in order to open up a shared space for theory. It will include guided tours of Labouring Bodies at the Museum Tinguely, a group exhibition on the relationship between the body, labor, and technology from a feminist perspective; a curated visit to the Schaulager Museum to discuss immersive media installations, the labor of archival practice and the ‚material matters‘ of museological work; visits to the Kunsthalle Basel; the Foundation Beyeler Museum, among other institutions; as well as the opportunity for participants to develop independent research and exploration of the city.
Program
Thursday, 22.10.2026, 18–21 h
Symposium, Part 1
Energetic Transfers: Technics, Ethics, and Production
Evening Program
Museum Tinguely
Paul Sacher-Anlage 2, 4002 Basel
18:30 h Opening Remarks
The Body Electric: Poetics and Politics
18:45 h Film Screening and Conversation
Night for Day
Emily Wardill in conversation with Prof. Dr. Markus Klammer, Schaulager Professor for Art Theory, Universität Basel
British artist and filmmaker Emily Wardill's Night for Day (2020) is a video installation anchored by two sets of interviews. The first features Isabel do Carmo, an endocrinologist who co-founded the anti-fascist Revolutionary Brigades in Portugal; and second is with two young men who are in the midst of establishing a machine-learning startup company for recognizing moving images in 2019. Night for Day was a commission for a solo show at Secession, Vienna and won the European Media Art Festival Award in 2021.
20 h Curator’s Walkthrough
Labouring Bodies exhibition
Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann, Curator, Museum Tinguely
Labouring Bodies explores the relationship between the body, labour and technology from a feminist perspective. With its focus on working with machines, the technologisation of production and reproduction, and women’s contribution to technological progress, the show invites us to rethink our notions of the body, labour and care.
Friday, 23.10.2026, 13:30–18 h
Symposium, Part 2
Energetic Transfers: Technics, Ethics, and Production
eikones - Center for the Theory and History of the Image
Universität Basel
Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel
13:30 h Introduction
Matters of Energy and Resistance
14 h Lecture
Entropy and the Chronopolitics of Modernity
Prof. Dr. Ana Teixeira Pinto, Professor for Art History and Digital Cultures, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
14:30 h Lecture
Marronage, Labour, and Reproductive Energy: Expanding the Age of Revolutions
Prof. Dr. Mary Grace Albanese, Assistant Professor in Postcolonial and English, Trinity College Dublin
15 h Coffee Break
15:15 h Lecture
The Tellurian Lubricant: From Measurement to Metaphor
Dr. Thomas Max Turnbull, Department on Knowledge Systems and Collective Life, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
15:45 h Discussion
Atomic Activism, Labor and Enervation in Eastern Europe
16:15 h Lecture
Chronopolitics of Post-Socialist Radiation
Aleksei Borisionok, Doctoral Candidate, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
16:45 h Lecture
Reenacting Revolution
Dr. Ana Adamović, Postdoctoral Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
17:15 h Discussion
17:30 h Mini Break
18 h Evening Lecture
Aesthetic Conation in the Milieu of Anti-Fascist Psychiatry in Saint-Alban
Prof. Dr. Isabell Lorey, Professor of Queer Studies, Academy of Media Arts Cologne
19 h Apero