We will have the great pleasure to host Dr. Pascal Schwaighofer for a lecture-performance consisting in video excerpts interpolated with text reading. The event will feature Pascal Schwaighofer's ongoing experimental work entitled, for the occasion, Practices of (Self-)Deception.

Synopsis: An experimental reshuffling of the audio-visual and textual material for the forthcoming exhibition at Alte Fabrik, Switzerland. Starting from the visual corresponding of amber-colored glass and honey, the exhibition project heuristically explores the extractive logic of sand mining, bee culture, and the interlockings of industrial production and domestication. Practices of (Self-)Deception is an invitation to explore the hyperrealist overlapping as a space of ambivalence between material production and (visual) appearance, still nurturing modern times desires and fantasies. 

Bio: Pascal Schwaighofer is an interdisciplinary artist and postdoc fellow at the Department of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at McGill University. In the spring of 2024, he was a postdoc fellow in Comparative Literary and Culture Studies and Social Justice and Sustainability programs at Franklin University Switzerland, and in 2022-23, was a Mellon Graduate Fellow at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and an MA in Fine Arts from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. His research is grounded in environmental humanities, visual culture, and critical theory. Starting from the material culture of apiculture, his dissertation titled Domesticating Metaphors—The Use(s) of Honeybees in Times of Extinction explores the modern Western fascination with honeybees and its transdisciplinary influence on literature, linguistics, cybernetics, economy, and ecology. 

Location: Critical Media Lab, Peterson Hall, Room 108.