Sascha Pohflepp (30 January 1978 – 17 June 2019) was a German artist, designer, and writer whose work focused on the role of technology’s influence on the environment, often collaborating with scientists and other artists to explore this theme.

Biography

Born in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

, Pohflepp received his diploma at the

Berlin University of the Arts The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the second largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research uni ...

in 2006 under media artist and designer Joachim Sauter, after studying during a guest term at the

École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs The École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (; ÉnsAD) also known as Arts Decos' and École des Arts décoratifs, is a public grande école of art and design, constituent member of PSL Research University. The school is located in the R ...

(ENSAD) in Paris with . In 2009, he received is Masters of Arts in Design Interactions at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

in London, UK, where he worked with Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, Noam Toran. In 2015, Pohflepp began his doctoral work with Benjamin H. Bratton in the PhD Program in Art History, Theory and Criticism with a concentration in Art Practice in the Department of Visual Arts at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. In Fall 2018, he advanced to candidacy with dissertation research on a new theory of "post-rational design", which interrelates discourses on the inhuman with the assemblage theory of

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

and

Felix Guattari Felix may refer to: * Felix (name), people and fictional characters with the name Places * Arabia Felix is the ancient Latin name of Yemen * Felix, Spain, a municipality of the province Almería, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, ...

and a rethinking of the

Anthropocene ''Anthropocene'' is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which human impact on the environment, humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to ...

. This project was influenced by his participation in the graduate specialization track in anthropogeny at th
Center for Academic Research & Training in Anthropogeny
(CARTA) at the University of California, San Diego, where he was an Annette Merle-Smith Fellow and worked with the anthropologist Pascal Gagneux. As an artist and designer, Pohflepp explored these ideas in such works as ''Growth Assembly'' (2009, with Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, illustrations by Sion Ap Tomos); ''Spacewalk'' (2017); ''Deep Unlearning (I)'' (2018, with Chris Woebken); and
Those Who
' (2019).

Work

Pohflepp created work on the subjects of

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary field of science that focuses on living systems and organisms. It applies engineering principles to develop new biological parts, devices, and systems or to redesign existing systems found in nat ...

, geo-engineering, artificial intelligence, and space exploration, and been credited with extending the framework of

Critical Design Critical design uses design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions and conceptions about the role objects play in everyday life. Critical design plays a similar role to product design, but does not emphasize an object ...

into the realm of elaborate

Counterfactuals Counterfactual conditionals (also ''contrafactual'', ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be he ...

and other modes of narrative. His work has been included in numerous international exhibitions, includin
''Talk to Me: Design and Communication between People and Objects''
at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in New York;
Grow Your Own: Life After Nature
' at The Science Gallery in Dublin;
Hyperlinks: Architecture and Design
' at

The Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatoria ...

; and
New Order
' at the Mediamatic Fabriek in Amsterdam. He received two Honorary Mentions from the VIDA Art and Artificial Life Awards and was an Eyebeam resident in 2013. In 2015, he was shortlisted for the

Berlin Art Prize The ''Berliner Kunstpreis'' (Berlin Art Prize), officially Großer Berliner Kunstpreis, is a prize for the arts by the City of Berlin. It was first awarded in 1948 in several fields of art. Since 1971, it has been awarded by the Academy of Art ...

. His essay
Living Machines
" co-authored with Sheref S. Mansy, is part of the 2017 book, ''Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology's Designs on Nature'' published with MIT Press.

References

External links

*
Sascha Pohflepp
anthropocene-curriculum.org
Sascha Pohflepp
hkw.de
Sascha Pohflepp
rca.ac.uk
Sascha Pohflepp: Power Points of the Far Future
www.hmkv.de {{DEFAULTSORT:Pohflepp, Sascha Artists from Cologne Synthetic biology artists 1978 births 2019 deaths 21st-century German artists Berlin University of the Arts alumni