Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
http://www.egs.edu
Elie During & Emmanuel Alloa
Relativism or Relationism? Perspectives on Perspective
https://pact.egs.edu/schedule/
http://www.egs.edu
Elie During & Emmanuel Alloa
Relativism or Relationism? Perspectives on Perspective
https://pact.egs.edu/schedule/

![Karen Barad. Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness. 2017
http://www.egs.edu Karen Barad, Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. Saas-Fee, Switzerland. August 2, 2017. Public open lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought.
Karen Michelle Barad is Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There, she also co-directs the Science & Justice Graduate Training Program, funded by the National Science Foundation, “that trains science and engineering students alongside social science and humanities students to identify and respond to moments where research requires attentiveness to questions of policy, ethics, and justice.”[1]
After receiving a PhD in theoretical particle physics from SUNY Stony Brook, Barad began her academic career at a physics department. Among her early publications are “A Quantum Epistemology And Its Impact On Our Understanding of Scientific Process”[2], “Quark-Antiquark Charge Distributions and Confinement”[3], and “Minimal Lattice Theory of Fermions”[4].
Traversing theoretical physics and feminist theory, her research interests are broad-ranging and include “[f]eminist science studies, materialisms, deconstruction, poststructuralism, critical posthumanism, decolonial studies, multispecies studies, science & justice, physics, continental philosophy, epistemology, ontology, ethics, politics, philosophy of physics, feminist, queer, & trans theories”[5].
Barad’s work has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hughes Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In 2016, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in the Arts at Gothenburg University in 2016.
[1] https://cbse.soe.ucsc.edu/education/science_justice
[2] The Barnard Occasional Papers, vol. III, Nr.1/1988.
[3] Physics Letters B, vol. 143, Issue 1-3/1984, with M. Ogilvie and C. Rebbi, 222-226.
[4] Physical Review D, vol. 30, Issue 6, 1305/ 1984.
[5] http://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?singleton=true&cruz_id=kbarad Karen Barad. Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness. 2017](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RZHurGcoRmQ/mqdefault.jpg)








![Sha Xin Wei. Replacing thought by algorithm, gesture by mechanism, organism by golem. 2018
http://www.egs.edu Sha Xin Wei, Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. Saas-Fee, Switzerland. June 25, 2018. Public open lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought.
Sha Xin Wei is Director of the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, as well as the Director of Synthesis, at Arizona State University in Phoenix, USA. His research interests are essentially interdisciplinary; he focuses on topological media, visualisation technologies, intersections between mathematics and humanities, and the critical study of media arts and sciences.
Sha Xin Wei studied mathematics at Harvard University and then completed his MA and PhD at Stanford University. His doctorate at Stanford University was devoted to “differential geometric performance and the technologies of writing in mathematics, computer science, and history and philosophy of science.”[1] It already reflected the interdisciplinary interests he continues to pursue in his career.
In 2001, he founded the Topological Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He describes it as “a fresh and unique atelier for art based research about how to make the places in which we live richer but not more complicated.”[2]
Before he became a Professor and Director of the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University in 2014, Sha Xin Wei was an Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Computer Science at Concordia University in Montreal (2005-2013). He was also the Canada Research Chair in Media Arts and Sciences.
Sha Xin Wei is a co-editor of two journals: Artificial Intelligence and Society and Creative Interfaces and Computer Graphics.
His most recent monograph is entitled Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter. It is published by MIT Press in 2013 and inspired by various (and diverse) thinkers such as Whitehead, Simondon, Deleuze, Guattari, Heraclitus, Bergson, North, Stengers, Serres, and Badiou. Xin Wei introduces the main argument of his work in the following way: “I argue for an approach to materiality inspired from continuity, field, and philosophy of process, based on ethico-aesthetic as well as technoscientific grounds. This project investigates what could be implied by continuous, or more precisely topological , approaches to media and matter in the concrete setting of installation-events. Another motive is to explore the ethico-aesthetic consequences of topologically creating performative events and computational media, drawing from the critical studies of science and technology. This project is a philosophical investigation that is conducted in a poetic mode of installation or event-based art and technology. This project is a philosophical investigation that is conducted in a poetic mode of installation or event-based art and technology.”[3]
Together with Chris Salter and Laura Farabough, Sha Xin Wei founded Sponge art group (1997). He is the author and co-author of numerous art projects including: TGarden responsive environments (Ars Electronica, DEAF, MediaTerra Athens, SIGGRAPH); Hubbub speech-sensitive urban surfaces; Softwear gestural sound instruments; WYSIWYG gesture-sensitive sounding weaving (ICMC, CLICK Festival Denmark); Ouija movement studies; Cosmicomics video installation (Elektra Montreal); eSea reactive wall (eArts Shanghai); and IL Y A video membrane (Rotterdam, San Francisco, Berkeley, Montreal), and Time Lenses installations (Beall Center Irvine, Musée des arts et métiers Paris).
[1] https://graycenter.uchicago.edu/experiments/alternate-reality-a-pervasive-play-project/sha-xin-wei
[2] https://artsmediaengineering.asu.edu/content/sha-xin-wei-named-director-school-arts-media-engineering
[3] Sha Xin Wei, Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013, pp. vii-viii. Sha Xin Wei. Replacing thought by algorithm, gesture by mechanism, organism by golem. 2018](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VGq78gm-Kks/mqdefault.jpg)