Public Talk: Tincuta Heinzel

Revolutionary Textiles. A Philosophical Inquiry on Electronic and Reactive Textiles

Friday February 9^th
12:00pm, EV 11.705

 The question we will address in this presentation is that of electronic and reactive textiles’ revolutionary character. This very question incorporates a series of other questions such as “what do electronic and reactive textiles revolutionize?”, but also “what it is to revolutionize?” in order to understand what exactly do we expect to be revolutionized when it comes to textiles. By addressing these questions and acknowledging the constructivist position of design, we will investigate its role(s) in the present societal-technical configurations.

Bio:
Tincuta Heinzel (PhD) is an artist, designer and curator interested in the relationship between art and technoscience. Following Visual Arts and Cultural Anthropology studies in Cluj (Romania), Tincuta completed her PhD in Aesthetics and Arts Sciences at Paris 1 University Panthèon-Sorbonne (France) in 2012 with a thesis on electronic and reactive textiles’ aesthetics and fabrication processes. Her artistic production focuses on electronic textiles and interactive installations and engages the ways in which technologies can be diverted in order to bring into the light their common places and potentialities. For now, under what she labels as “aesthetics of imperceptibility” she is investigating the aesthetic issues of nano-materiality and design’s new roles as operator between scales.

She initiated, curated and/or coordinated several projects, such as “Artists in Industry” (Bucharest, 2011-2013), “Haptosonics” (Oslo, 2012-2013), “Repertories of (in)discreetness” (Cologne, Budapest, Bucharest, 2013-2015) and “Attempts, Failures, Trails and Errors” (Bergen, Bucharest, 2017-2018).

She was DAAD fellow at ZKM Karlsruhe (Germany), artist in residence at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Germany), Fulbright Fellow at Cornell University (USA). At present she is Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University (UK) and visiting professor at “Ion Mincu” Architecture and Urbanism University Bucharest (Romania).