"But how and what can be called reality or realities at all when each and everyone’s perception of it is so different?" Nelly Y. Pinkrah asked 2021 in ARE YOU FOR REAL – Phase 1.
"When does anything become reality or real?" For this lecture Pinkrah further probes how media and technology constitute the reality in which experiences become possible, reflecting on world-building and its possible resonance with Édouard Glissant’s statement: "Nothing is true, everything is alive".
Nelly Y. Pinkrah is a Black and media studies scholar currently with a position at the Chair of Digital Cultures at the Technical University of Dresden. Her work explores Black studies, media and technology, poetics and politics, and critical pedagogies. Her doctoral thesis explores "The Technological Everyday" through Édouard Glissant in relation to language and technology, history and epistemology, as well as cybernetics. Nelly co-runs the project "School of (Un)Thought" with Mitch Pfeifer (part of international network ASchool). She is also part of the speakers' circle of the Alliance for Critical Scholarship in Solidarity (KriSol), a member of the German Forum Antiracism Media Studies (FAM) and the DFG Network Gender, Media, Affect. She is affiliated with the Center for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University. In 2021, she lectured at the University of Groningen.
Most recent: "Calculating Intelligence" in: Stella Rollin, Eva Fischer, Jamila Grandits (eds.), coded manoeuvres (Cologne: Walther und Franz König, 2025).
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Further information about the event
The digital exhibition project ARE YOU FOR REAL enters a new stage: we are delighted to invite you to a six-part online mediation programme of guided tours, artist encounters, speculative writing and listening sessions, and an opening lecture by Nelly Y. Pinkrah.
How do technology, computation, and the sciences shape our understanding of "the real"? And how do we distinguish the real from the merely possible, the virtual, the actual, the magical? Since launching in 2020, ARE YOU FOR REAL has evolved into a resonant constellation of "cosmo-clusters" exploring technology’s infrastructural entanglements, regenerative power, magical thinking, tactical agency, predictive ambitions, and haunted nature. Shaped by its diversity of artistic commissions, the platform contends with digitalization and a reality irreducibly entangled with the online sphere.
Now we invite you on a deep dive into the solar systems gathered by ARE YOU FOR REAL through six guided sessions shaped around world-building exercises and reflections on generated realities. Join in whichever mode feels comfortable: Listen in or actively participate, stay for one or join all six.
All events are free of charge and will be hosted via ifa’s open-source Civil Society Platform using BigBlueButton.
ARE YOU FOR REAL was initiated by ifa in 2020. Phase 2 is curated by Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, the online mediation programme is hosted by Barbara Zoé Kiolbassa.
Exploring the ARE YOU FOR REAL platform and its cosmo-clusters with its curators Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás und Giulia Bini
Guided tour focusing on works that renegotiate infrastructures of power, labor struggles, body, and identity – Encounter with artists Tatyana Zambrano and Theodoulos Polyviou
Speculative free-writing session with written exercises of world-building with artists Moritz Jekat und Caroline Sinders.
Immersive sonic experience and deep listening session – Listening with artists Saša Spačal and Zheng Mahler.
Guided tour focusing on poetic forms of internet critique, online interventions, and interactive websites – Encounter with artists eeefff und Sara Bezovšek
With over 20 touring exhibitions currently travelling across the globe and with its diverse event programmes on contemporary art, the ifa links the German art scene with internationally active cultural creators and forms cooperations and networks. The projects, many of which were developed in co-creation with local partners, cover the various disciplines of modern and contemporary fine arts – from current themes in architecture, photography and design to Bauhaus and monographic exhibitions such as Rosemarie Trockel or Marcel Odenbach. These projects generate local meeting platforms and allow international perspectives on topics of global relevance. The ifa also provides loan exhibits to interested museums.
