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38		<link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/Interface.e58d0364.js"><title>Kim Albrecht | Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary</title><!-- HEAD_svelte-1cu0tyd_START --><meta name="title" content="Kim Albrecht | Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary"><meta name="description" content="From automated navigation to weather forecasts, data visualizations, and painting, abstraction has an undeniable presence in the contemporary world. Yet, it not only represents but also creates worlds. It is an operative concept that likewise possesses an imaginary thrust for perceiving things otherwise. As such, abstraction comes in many different forms: It is an aesthetic, a technology, an epistemology, and a practice. Therefore, it is also a political attitude, a mode of description, a tool of complexity reduction, and an instruction for intervention. Depending on its context and use, it can take on radically different connotations, ranging from dehumanizing to appealing, from affirmative to critical, from incorporated to autonomous.&lt;br>&lt;br> Taking its cue from the different meanings and applications of abstraction, the international lecture series “Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary” is designed as an interdisciplinary endeavor with a focus on visual media and digital culture. Most digital technologies (like networks, computer simulation or artificial intelligence) and correlated practices are closely connected to different forms of abstraction on different levels. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, the series brings together a group of international scholars, artists, and curators who speak on abstraction today as it unfolds in fields such as art, photography, film, design, image science, visual culture studies, philosophy, and more. Grounding the inquiries into the contemporary conditions of abstraction are contributions focusing on its historical lineage, most importantly its emergence within the discourse of modernism to be understood in its global and postcolonial plurality.&lt;br>&lt;br>With Presentations by Kim Albrecht, Crystal Campbell, Sabine Eckmann, Henning Engelke, David Getsy, Till Heilmann, Evan Hume, Raz Ion, Sven Lütticken, Birgit Schneider, Alberto Toscano, Isabel Wünsche."><meta name="author" content="Kim Albrecht"><meta name="copyright" content="Kim Albrecht"><meta name="robots" content="index,follow"><meta property="og:type" content="website"><meta property="og:url" content="https://kimalbrecht.com/item/2025-abstraction-today"><meta property="og:title" content="Kim Albrecht | Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary"><meta property="og:description" content="From automated navigation to weather forecasts, data visualizations, and painting, abstraction has an undeniable presence in the contemporary world. Yet, it not only represents but also creates worlds. It is an operative concept that likewise possesses an imaginary thrust for perceiving things otherwise. As such, abstraction comes in many different forms: It is an aesthetic, a technology, an epistemology, and a practice. Therefore, it is also a political attitude, a mode of description, a tool of complexity reduction, and an instruction for intervention. Depending on its context and use, it can take on radically different c
38onnotations, ranging from dehumanizing to appealing, from affirmative to critical, from incorporated to autonomous.&lt;br>&lt;br> Taking its cue from the different meanings and applications of abstraction, the international lecture series “Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary” is designed as an interdisciplinary endeavor with a focus on visual media and digital culture. Most digital technologies (like networks, computer simulation or artificial intelligence) and correlated practices are closely connected to different forms of abstraction on different levels. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, the series brings together a group of international scholars, artists, and curators who speak on abstraction today as it unfolds in fields such as art, photography, film, design, image science, visual culture studies, philosophy, and more. Grounding the inquiries into the contemporary conditions of abstraction are contributions focusing on its historical lineage, most importantly its emergence within the discourse of modernism to be understood in its global and postcolonial plurality.&lt;br>&lt;br>With Presentations by Kim Albrecht, Crystal Campbell, Sabine Eckmann, Henning Engelke, David Getsy, Till Heilmann, Evan Hume, Raz Ion, Sven Lütticken, Birgit Schneider, Alberto Toscano, Isabel Wünsche."><meta property="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"><meta property="twitter:url" content="https://kimalbrecht.com/item/2025-abstraction-today"><meta property="twitter:title" content="Kim Albrecht | Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary"><meta property="twitter:description" content="From automated navigation to weather forecasts, data visualizations, and painting, abstraction has an undeniable presence in the contemporary world. Yet, it not only represents but also creates worlds. It is an operative concept that likewise possesses an imaginary thrust for perceiving things otherwise. As such, abstraction comes in many different forms: It is an aesthetic, a technology, an epistemology, and a practice. Therefore, it is also a political attitude, a mode of description, a tool of complexity reduction, and an instruction for intervention. Depending on its context and use, it can take on radically different connotations, ranging from dehumanizing to appealing, from affirmative to critical, from incorporated to autonomous.&lt;br>&lt;br> Taking its cue from the different meanings and applications of abstraction, the international lecture series “Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary” is designed as an interdisciplinary endeavor with a focus on visual media and digital culture. Most digital technologies (like networks, computer simulation or artificial intelligence) and correlated practices are closely connected to different forms of abstraction on different levels. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, the series brings together a group of international scholars, artists, and curators who speak on abstraction today as it unfolds in fields such as art, photography, film, design, image science, visual culture studies, philosophy, and more. Grounding the inquiries into the contemporary conditions of abstraction are contributions focusing on its historical lineage, most importantly its emergence within the discourse of modernism to be understood in its global and postcolonial plurality.&lt;br>&lt;br>With Presentations by Kim Albrecht, Crystal Campbell, Sabine Eckmann, Henning Engelke, David Getsy, Till Heilmann, Evan Hume, Raz Ion, Sven Lütticken, Birgit Schneider, Alberto Toscano, Isabel Wünsche."><meta property="twitter:image" content="https://kimalbrecht.com/img/talks/2025-abstraction-today-talk-kim-albrecht.png"> <meta property="og:image" content="https://kimalbrecht.com/img/talks/2025-abstraction-today-talk-kim-albrecht.png"><!-- HEAD_svelte-1cu0tyd_END -->
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41		<div>   <div class="noprint w-full h-8 flex justify-around text-center leading-8 bg-white text-black dark:bg-black dark:text-white border-b border-b-black dark:border-b-white text-black text-xs svelte-gebb8e"><a href="/about/" class="w-full h-8 hover:bg-black hover:text-white dark:hover:bg-white dark:hover:text-black ">text</a> <a href="/cv/" class="w-full h-8 border-l border-black dark:border-white hover:bg-black hover:text-white dark:hover:bg-white dark:hover:text-black ">cv</a> <a href="/" class="w-full h-8 border-l border-black dark:border-white hover:bg-black hover:text-white dark:hover:bg-white dark:hover:text-black ">grid</a> <a href="/vis/" class="w-full h-8 border-l border-black dark:border-white hover:bg-black hover:text-white dark:hover:bg-white dark:hover:text-black ">time</a> </div> <div class="flex max-w-screen-lg p-2 ml-auto mr-auto"><div class="flex flex-wrap m-2 p-2 text-black dark:text-white bg-white dark:bg-black border border-black dark:border-white"><a href="https://www.medienwissenschaft.uni-bonn.de/lehrveranstaltungen/abstraction-today-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="flex m-2 p-2 items-center text-base cursor-pointer border border-black dark:border-white text-white dark:text-black bg-black dark:bg-white hover:bg-white hover:text-black dark:hover:bg-black dark:hover:text-white">visit talk</a> <div class="flex m-2 border border-black dark:border-white items-center"><img class="max-w-[600px] max-h-[600px] w-full object-cover" alt="Image of Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary, by Kim Albrecht, data visualization research" src="../../img/talks/2025-abstraction-today-talk-kim-albrecht.png"></div> <div class="h-0 basis-full"></div> <div class="flex grow m-2 p-2 border border-black dark:border-white items-center"><p class="text-xs">talk</p></div> <div class="flex grow m-2 p-2 border border-black dark:border-white items-center"><p class="text-xs">16/12/2025</p></div>  <div class="flex grow m-2 p-2 border border-black dark:border-white items-center"><p class="text-xs">Institute of Art History &amp; Department of Media Studies at the University of Bonn, Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM)</p></div>  <div class="flex grow m-2 p-2 border border-black dark:border-white items-center"><h1 class="text-4xl">Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary</h1></div> <div class="flex grow m-2 p-2 border border-black dark:border-white items-center"><p class="text-base"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->From automated navigation to weather forecasts, data visualizations, and painting, abstraction has an undeniable presence in the contemporary world. Yet, it not only represents but also creates worlds. It is an operative concept that likewise possesses an imaginary thrust for perceiving things otherwise. As such, abstraction comes in many different forms: It is an aesthetic, a technology, an epistemology, and a practice. Therefore, it is also a political attitude, a mode of description, a tool of complexity reduction, and an instruction for intervention. Depending on its context and use, it can take on radically different c
41onnotations, ranging from dehumanizing to appealing, from affirmative to critical, from incorporated to autonomous.<br><br> Taking its cue from the different meanings and applications of abstraction, the international lecture series “Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary” is designed as an interdisciplinary endeavor with a focus on visual media and digital culture. Most digital technologies (like networks, computer simulation or artificial intelligence) and correlated practices are closely connected to different forms of abstraction on different levels. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, the series brings together a group of international scholars, artists, and curators who speak on abstraction today as it unfolds in fields such as art, photography, film, design, image science, visual culture studies, philosophy, and more. Grounding the inquiries into the contemporary conditions of abstraction are contributions focusing on its historical lineage, most importantly its emergence within the discourse of modernism to be understood in its global and postcolonial plurality.<br><br>With Presentations by Kim Albrecht, Crystal Campbell, Sabine Eckmann, Henning Engelke, David Getsy, Till Heilmann, Evan Hume, Raz Ion, Sven Lütticken, Birgit Schneider, Alberto Toscano, Isabel Wünsche.<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></p></div> <div class="border border-black dark:border-white m-2 p-2"><div class="border border-black dark:border-white m-2 p-2" data-svelte-h="svelte-1kyz1hp"><p class="text-xs">Relations</p></div> <div class="flex flex-wrap"><a href="../artificial-worldviews" class="flex grow m-2 p-2 items-center text-xs border border-black dark:border-white text-white dark:text-black bg-black dark:bg-white hover:bg-white hover:text-black dark:hover:bg-black dark:hover:text-white"><p><span class="text-[9px]"> project</span> <br>Artificial Worldviews<br> <span class="text-[9px]">metaLAB (at) Harvard &amp; Berlin</span></p> </a><a href="../phd-media-theory" class="flex grow m-2 p-2 items-center text-xs border border-black dark:border-white text-white dark:text-black bg-black dark:bg-white hover:bg-white hover:text-black dark:hover:bg-black dark:hover:text-white"><p><span class="text-[9px]"> education</span> <br>PhD in Media Theory, Potsdam University<br> <span class="text-[9px]">Potsdam</span></p> </a><a href="../metoo" class="flex grow m-2 p-2 items-center text-xs border border-black dark:border-white text-white dark:text-black bg-black dark:bg-white hover:bg-white hover:text-black dark:hover:bg-black dark:hover:text-white"><p><span class="text-[9px]"> project</span> <br>#MeToo Anti-Network<br> <span class="text-[9px]">metaLAB (at) Harvard</span></p> </a><a href="../post-networks" class="flex grow m-2 p-2 items-center text-xs border border-black dark:border-white text-white dark:text-black bg-black dark:bg-white hover:bg-white hover:text-black dark:hover:bg-black dark:hover:text-white"><p><span class="text-[9px]"> project</span> <br>Post_Networks<br> <span class="text-[9px]">metaLAB (at) Harvard</span></p> </a></div></div></div></div> <button class="noprint w-6 h-6 fixed bottom-1 left-1 rounded-full hover:w-16 transition-all text-[0px] hover:text-sm bg-black dark:bg-white text-white dark:text-black z-50 border border-2 border-white dark:border-black svelte-gebb8e">light</button> 
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