“Out of This World”
Sloterdijk, who spent a year at Bard some ten years ago, is that rare thing–a philosopher with regular television show (in Germany). He is professor of philosophy and aesthetics and rector of the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, a new university focusing on arts and media. Sloterdijk is best known for his book “Critique of Cynical Reason”(1983), a defense of the cynics of Antiquity against the modern philosophical cynicism of Darwin, Marx, and Freud. His other books in English include “Thinker on Stage. Nietzsche’s Materialism.” He has written extensively on language, psychoanalysis, and contemporary politics.
Andrei Ujica is professor of literature, film, and media theory at the HfG. Romanian-born Ujica is a penetrating and sometimes funny critic of the relationship between power and the media, especially as observed in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall. His films, in addition to “Out of the Present,” include “Videograms of a Revolution” (1992, with Harum Farocki), a deconstruction of the five-day Romanian revolution using only local television images and amateur footage, and “2 Pasolini” (2000), a “poetic commentary” on Pasolini’s Jesus-film, “Ilvangelo secondo Matteo” that was commissioned by the Cartier Foundation on the theme “wilderness.”
Peter Sloterdijk spoke on “The Space Station as Perfect Island.” His talk will be followed by Andrei Ujica’s 1995 film “Out of the Present.” The film tells the story of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who spent 10 months aboard the space station Mir, while on earth, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
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