"In technology, a physis is being organized through which mankind's contact with the cosmos takes a new and different form from that which it had in nations and families." This strange and enigmatic sentence is Walter Benjamin's outlook at the end of his 1928 book "Einbahnstrasse". The symposium "Cosmopoetics" will try to follow its trajectory by discussing the return of cosmology in 20th century thought. What does it mean when technology becomes a comprehensive organizing principle encompassing man and nature and leaving behind all political and cultural traditions? The lectures will lead from Weimar Germany and its technology obsessed avant-garde to American cybernetics and the counterculture of the nineteen-sixties. A key figure in this context will be R. Buckminster Fuller, who wanted the architect to be a "world planner" and who therefore can be called the founder of (post-)modern "Cosmopoetics".

Organized by Hans-Christian von Herrmann (NYU Department of German, TU Berlin). With lectures by Bruce Clarke (Texas Tech University), Joachim Krausse (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences), David McConville(Buckminster Fuller Institute), Jeannie Moser (TU Berlin), and Christina Vagt (TU Berlin).

The symposium is made possible by the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Research Foundation (DFG), Deutsches Haus at NYU, the NYU Department of German, and the TU Berlin.

Events at Deutsches Haus are free of charge. Please let us know you would like to attend this event by sending us an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu as well. Space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event.

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