Posthumanism meets practice

Posthumanism meets practice: In this interdisciplinary panel discussion, we examine the future of humanity between transhumanism, bio-modification, and body augmentation – scientifically grounded and artistically experienced. Composer and media artist Alexander Schubert (ETERNAL DAWN, p. 8) and other guests open up different perspectives on hybrid bodies, performative technologies, and new forms of subjectivity. Together, they discuss opportunities, risks, and social implications: from cybernetic prostheses and AI-supported creativity to questions of autonomy, identity, and responsibility. An evening about the evolution of the body — between the laboratory, the stage, and everyday life.

Alexander Schubert (composition & direction) lives in Hamburg and is a co-founder of the Decoder Ensemble. In his works he combines musical composition with performative, installative, and technological set-ups—most recently ANIMA™ was shown at Kampnagel in 2022.

Theresa Schubert is a Berlin-based artist and researcher operating within unstable assemblages of flesh, code, and matter. With a PhD in Media Art from Bauhaus-University Weimar, she creates situations in which living organisms, technological apparatuses and algorithms are not instruments but autonomous agents and co-creators.

Her works unfold as techno-organic ecologies — part laboratory, part speculation— where bio-cybernetic systems, immersive video and simulations reorganize perception and unsettle sensory hierarchies. Rather than illustrating futures, Schubert stages entanglements between human and non-human actors, exposing the porous boundaries between nature and culture, organic and synthetic, autonomy and dependency. By confronting animal ethics, transspecies co-becoming, and more-than-human agency, her practice proposes art as a site of experimentation where coexistence is negotiated in real time — not imagined, not represented, but materially enacted.

Her work has been awarded with the Award of Excellence at the Japan Media Arts Festival 2022 (Art Division), a Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention (AI & Life Art 2021), a STARTS Prize 2021 Honorary Mention, the NTAA (New Technological Art Award) 2016. She has been awarded with a S+T+ARTS Residency (2019 and 2022) funded by the European Commission and was artist-in-resident at the Group of Applied and Molecular Microbiology at TU Berlin (2018-20).

Felina Levits is an artist and costume and stage designer based in Hamburg. She works at the intersection of costume, texture, and spatial installation. Her costumes are independent artistic works in which material, body, and texture appear as equal forms of thought. Her focus is on questions of identity, protection, and visibility, which she explores through feminist discourse, craftsmanship, and material research. Since 2016, she has been part of the performance collective Frauen und Fiktion (Women and Fiction), which conducts research on gender roles and equality in research-based performances. She works closely with multimedia composer Alexander Schubert, for whose music performances she develops fictional body spaces. Her work has been shown at the Ruhrfestspiele, the Mallion Theatre Strasbourg, the Centre Pompidou, the Junges Schauspielhaus Hamburg, and Kampnagel, among others.

Christopher Coenen ist Politikwissenschaftler und arbeitet seit 2003 als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Instituts für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS), das zum Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) gehört. Dort leitet er auch die Forschungsgruppe »Gesundheit und Technisierung des Lebens«. Themen am ITAS sind u.a. Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien, Neurotechnologien, Transhumanismus, »Human Enhancement« und allgemein die zunehmende Mensch-Technik-Entgrenzung. Neben einer Vielzahl anderer Projekte war er von 2017 bis 2022 Verbundkoordinator des transnationalen Forschungsprojekts FUTUREBODY und hat seit den 2000er Jahren mehrfach den Deutschen Bundestag und das Europäische Parlament zu den genannten Themen beraten. Coenen ist zudem seit 2013 leitender Herausgeber der Zeitschrift »Ethics and Society« (bis 2025 »NanoEthics: Studies of New and Emerging Technologies«).