Publication

  • Superhumanity: Design of the Self
    Nick Axel, Beatriz Colomina, NIkolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle, and Mark Wigley
    Editors
    University of Minnesota Press, e-flux Architecture, and Graham Foundation, 2018
  • GRANTEE
    E-Flux Architecture
    GRANT YEAR
    2017

Wang Yaping demonstrates the behavior of a ball of water in space during a lecture broadcast to students on Earth in 2013. Photo: SCMP Pictures.

The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects, but rather extends from carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” Superhumanity aims to probe the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, to which we ask: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others? Over 50 writers, scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archeologists and anthropologists bring new insight to these and related questions.

Contributors include: Boris Groys, Keller Easterling, Brooke Holmes, Andrew Herscher, Mabel O. Wilson, Trevor Paglen, Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Eyal Weizman, Ruha Benjamin, Tom Holert, Sylvia Lavin, Lydia Kallipoliti, Ina Blom, Lesley Lokko, Raqs Media Collective, MAP Office, Shumon Basar, Felicity D. Scott, Daniel Birnbaum and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Tony Chakar, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty, Rubén Gallo, Giuliana Bruno, Ingo Niermann, Hu Fang, Spyros Papapetros, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Juliane Rebentisch, Jack Self, Chus Martínez, Lucia Allais, Francesca Hughes, Paulo Tavares, Ahmet Ögüt, Andrés Jaque, Mark Cousins, Hito Steyerl, Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Liam Young, Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev, Liam Gillick, Pelin Tan, Benjamin H. Bratton, Simon Denny, Stephan Trüby, Kali Stull and Etienne Turpin, Sophia Roosth, Brian Kuan Wood, Yongwoo Lee, and Thomas Keenan.

The project is edited by Beatriz Colomina, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle, and Mark Wigley, with deputy editor Nick Axel and image editor Marina Silva.

e-flux Architecture is a publishing platform, archive, and an editorial project founded in 2016. The news, events, exhibitions, programs, journals, books, and projects disseminated by e-flux Architecture as daily announcements describe strains of critical discourse surrounding contemporary architecture, culture, and theory internationally. Since its inception, e-flux Architecture has maintained a dynamic international program of projects and events featuring contributions by a wide range of disciplinary positions and perspectives. Editorial content commissioned and published by e-flux Architecture consistently showcases some of the most rigorous, critical, sincere, and engaged theoretical work being produced today in and around the fields of architecture, urbanism, and design.